Hot Dames and Hot Lead
by alcimines
Summary: Set in a noir-ish 1930s alternative universe. Logan and Lehnsherr run the biggest gangs in town. Domino is a hard-boiled private eye. Rogue is her secretary and lover. And the client is the mysterious and beautiful Emma Frost. Surely such a lovely woman couldn't be full of lies? Right?
1. Hot Dames and Hot Lead

HOT DAMES AND HOT LEAD

I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my office. And if I'd had any sense at all, I should've thrown her pretty little ass right back out onto the sidewalk - and then locked the door and put a bullet into the phone to make sure I never heard from her again. But I'm better known for being lucky than for being smart. Just ask anyone in this town.

She was blonde and beautiful, the ice-cold and damn-near perfect kind of blonde and beautiful that haunts dreams. And she was wearing a designer dress that pretty much screamed, "I'm rich!". Hell, her shoes probably cost more than I make in the average month. People like her - the rich and the beautiful - they aren't like the rest of us. They really don't have to play by the same rules, and more than a few of them don't even pretend to try.

But this dame wasn't just trouble. It was pretty obvious that she was in trouble, too. I could see it in her eyes. She was scared - and her kind of person isn't used to being scared.

Unfortunately, I'm not good at telling people who need help to go away. Maybe it would be better if I was.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" Marie asked coldly. Marie's my Gal Friday, and I couldn't imagine having anyone else doing my typing and filing. Sometimes, when business is particularly slow, the way Marie leans over the desk to pour me a cup of coffee is the only reason I bother to show up at the office.

"You must be Miss Domino," the blonde said to me - completely ignoring Marie.

"Domino," I automatically corrected her. "Or just Dom for short."

She flashed a smile at me. It was a quick and tired smile, but (no surprise) she was one of those people who had the ability to light up a room. I found myself wondering how many men and women had made fools of themselves trying to get a second glimpse of that smile.

I nodded towards where Marie was sitting, "And this is Marie."

The temperature in the office seemed to drop about thirty degrees as Marie and the blonde made minimally polite nods in each other's direction. Neither of them actually bothered to say anything.

"Let's get down to business," I continued hurriedly. "What's wrong?"

"My name is Emma Frost. And I need your help," she said quietly.

I knew the name, of course. The Frost family is big in this town - real big. And Emma Frost's name is a regular in the society pages. And sometimes in the regular news section as well.

"Why don't you sit down, Miss Frost?" I said as I slid a chair in her direction.

"Call me Emma. It's so good to finally be able to talk to you, Domino. You come highly recommended."

Marie gave me a long, hard look that pretty much made it clear what she was thinking. Then she went back to her typing, her eyes glued to the paper as her fingers hammered rhythmically at the keys of her typewriter.

Yikes.

My prospective client gingerly settled her very fine-looking bottom into my least ratty chair, as if she was afraid of catching something from it. My office is pretty small and not exactly expensive furnished. Emma looked way out of place in my office - like a swan in a particularly dank Chicago back-alley.

"So what's wrong, Emma?" I asked carefully.

Emma frowned and said, "There's a man I need you to find. He's a friend and I fear that he is in a great deal of trouble. His name is Dr. Charles Xavier."

That didn't exactly ring any bells. "Never heard of him," I said with a shrug.

Emma nodded, "He avoids publicity. And he runs in social circles that are a bit... different... than those you might be more familiar with. But Dr. Xavier is a good friend, both of myself and my family."

A single perfect tear appeared in the corner of one of Emma's eyes. "He vanished a few weeks ago. And I fear that he's ran afoul of that brute who runs the criminals down on the docks."

Marie was still typing. But she suddenly missed a key. There was a pause. And then she backspaced and began typing again.

"You're talking about Logan?" I asked slowly. I didn't dare look at Marie.

Emma nodded emphatically as she wiped her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief, "Yes!"

"Why would Logan be involved with a scientist?" I asked with a confused shake of my head. "That's not his kind of thing."

Emma shook her head, looking like the picture of puzzled confusion. "I don't know! But Dr. Xavier told me that he was interested in Logan and his gang. And then he vanished! I think Charles asked one question too many about Logan. I only hope that Charles is still alive!"

I didn't say anything as I considered what Emma had told me. Her story had one thing going for it - it was so weird that it was probably true.

* * *

Emma was gone and her very generous retainer fee was safely tucked into my otherwise empty wallet - minus the fine rendition of Andrew Jackson that I'd given to Marie.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I'd just finished the first part of the case. That was the part they should teach you in Detective School, but don't. The part where you check out your client's story. After hanging up the phone, I stared at it thoughtfully. I'd made a series of calls that had revealed a startling fact - my client was probably being at least minimally honest with me. A Dr. Charles Xavier had recently arrived in town, and then vanished. In fact, a missing persons report had been filed on him. He was apparently both a friend and an occasional business partner of Emma's father. And the good doctor had been asking a lot of questions about Logan and his gang the week before he pulled his vanishing act - or a vanishing act got pulled for him.

Marie was looking more than a little worried. It was an hour past quitting time and she kept finding excuses to stick around the office.

"Ah don't trust this Frost woman," she finally blurted out. Her southern accent always becomes a little more obvious when she's worried or angry.

"Her story checks out so far," I mused.

"So are you gonna go talk to Logan?" Marie asked worriedly.

I pulled my M1911 .45 automatic out of my shoulder holster and racked the slide to chamber a round. Then I gently lowered the hammer and pulled the magazine out of the grip. Taking a cartridge from a box of ammo that I kept in my desk, I refreshed the clip. Then I slapped the magazine back into the weapon. Normally, it's not a good idea to carry an automatic with a round actually in the chamber, but this was an exceptional circumstance. That extra shot might come in really handy. Grabbing the ankle holster from my bottom drawer, I checked the load of the Smith and Wesson Chief's .357 Magnum Special that was tucked into it. Six hollow point bullets looked back up at me, neatly nestled into their snug little beds and looking strangely eager to come out and play. Snapping the cylinder shut, I strapped the holster onto my left ankle. After that, I grabbed two spare magazines for the .45 and made sure they were fully loaded. I clipped them onto the forward strap of my shoulder holster. A six-inch switchblade completed my ensemble. I tested the action - it flipped open with a clear 'snap' - and then I closed the blade and put it into my pants pocket.

Marie was giving me a fairly deadly look by the time I was done.

"Yeah, I'm going to go have a talk with Logan," I said to her.

"Dom..." she began nervously.

I stopped what she was going to say with a kiss. Like always, she tasted like a slice of heaven. Like always, whenever she was in my arms, I wished I didn't have to ever let her go. Like always, I took my time tracing my fingers along the side of her face, enjoying the smooth freshness of her skin.

"I'll be careful," I said to her. "I promise."

Marie hugged me and didn't say anything.

* * *

There's some history between Marie and Logan. Once upon a time, they were incredibly tight. But she left him because he was never around - the guy has a permanently ingrained restless streak. And Marie isn't the kind to sit around and pine for her missing man.

There's also some history between me and Logan. It mostly consists of a this ongoing cycle in which we fuck like mad for a few weeks, and then try to kill each other for some reason for another. It makes sense if you're not looking at it from the outside.

In our crazy sort of way, Marie and I both care about him. And we're pretty wary of him, as well. I suppose they both come with the territory.

Really, the situation between the three of us is a mess and I don't like to talk about it. But it meant that I was one of the few people in the city who could ask to see Logan and not have to explain why. So that's exactly what I did. I picked up the phone, called Logan's right-hand man - a hulking beast of a man named Hank McCoy - and told him that I needed to talk to his boss.

"You gotta be kidding me," Hank growled back at me.

"It's important," I said back into the phone.

"Dom... you know you ain't exactly Logan's favorite person right now?"

"I know," I said impatiently.

"Look, Dom, you're a smart lady. So why do you keep pushing things with Logan? He's given you break after break. The kinds of breaks he doesn't give anyone else. You know that, don't you?"

Some people call Hank "the Beast". And they have a point. But the guy uses violence to get things done, not because he likes to hurt people. Otherwise, he's a lot smarter than he looks and can be a surprisingly reasonable guy. Sometimes, I find myself wondering what would have happened if Hank had gotten a few different breaks in life.

"I know," I growled, not wanting to admit anything. "Yeah, I'm pushing my luck. But that's what I do, Hank. Pushing my luck is how I make a living."

Hank was silent for a few seconds. And then I heard him sigh. "Okay, he'll be at Remy's tonight. Be there at nine. But you mind your damn manners, Dom! You hear me?"

"Hey, when have I ever been anything less than courteous to Logan?" I asked innocently.

"Does that count the time you shot him?"

"That was self-defense!"

"All he did was kiss you!"

"I don't like it when he kisses me!"

Hank paused and then he chuckled, "Wasn't always like that. Remember that time I caught you and him buck-naked in the backseat of that Packard?"

I could feel my face flush. Conversations with Hank always seemed to go off the rails. Like I said, he's smart.

"That was then. This is now." I snarled back.

"Whatever you say, sweetie," he said dismissively. "But I suggest you keep something in mind: you surprised us last time, Dom. Now we know better. You pull a gun on Logan this time and you'll find yourself on the bottom of a layer-cake made up of hairy, smelly, heavily-armed hard-cases. And I promise I'll be the first guy to jump on top of you."

"Promises, promises," I sighed.

At first, Hank seemed a little shocked at my response. I marked that up under the "win" column. But then he just laughed and hung up the phone.

* * *

Remy's is an establishment that occupies a special place in this burg. It's a legal nightclub and an illegal gambling den. Prohibition doesn't really seem to have any effect on how the place is run. The costumers dress to the nines, while some of the most beautiful women you'll ever see dance on the club's side-stages wearing nothing more than winning smiles. And the music is fantastic - some of the best musicians in town got their start performing on the main stage. I'll say this for Remy, he has both an eye and an ear for talent.

Decent people never admit to going to Remy's, but they go anyway and pretend not to notice the other decent people that they see there. Indecent people, on the other hand, make a point to being seen in Remy's. It's a sign that you're someone of importance. Remy was the place where those two parts of society connect with each another. The deals that are struck in the darker corners of the club can make or break the most important men in the country. And rumor has it that you can buy anything at Remy's. That rumor is more correct, and more ominous, than most people know, because most people don't seem to realize just how scary of a concept "anything" can be.

When I entered the club, a striking black woman named Ororo Munroe was performing on the main stage. She was wearing a floor-length gown of pure white and singing a low and sad tune. She's pretty good. Surprisingly good, given that she's not a professional. In fact, she's one of Logan's more dangerous hitters.

As I walked into the ballroom, Ororo looked directly at me. Her smile was sweet as candy, yet so carnivorous that it would have looked right on the face a tiger. Her presence onstage was a not-terribly-subtle warning from Hank.

I carefully scanned the club. Through the smoky haze of cigarette and cigar smoke, I could see that the place was packed. Ororo didn't perform that often and her fans had turned out for the event. However, it wasn't the normal customers that I was looking for. I wanted to know just what kind of security Hank had set up for his boss. I wasn't looking for trouble, but it was never a good idea to assume that trouble won't come looking for you.

I have to admit that Kurt looked good in a tux. He was sitting at a table near the stage and drinking champagne as he chatted with his usual bevy of pretty young ladies. He nodded pleasantly at me and I nodded back.

Bobby was sitting at the same table as Kurt. He looked like some kid who was hanging out with his more worldly older brother. But they don't call him "Iceman" for nothing. He's one of the coolest costumers you'll ever see in a fight. Oddly enough, when he wasn't kicking down doors and breaking legs for Logan, Bobby kept the books for the gang. Believe it or not, he has a freaking degree in accounting.

I tell you, sometimes there's no figuring people.

Then a nearby cigarette girl deliberately caught my eye. It was Kitty. The outfit she was wearing only involved minimal skin coverage. Despite all my disagreements with her, I couldn't help but enjoy the view.

"Hi, Dom," she said quietly, but with a bright and innocent smile. "Maybe tonight's the night, huh?"

The last time we met, I broke Kitty's nose and she promised to kill me for that. If you knew Kitty, then you knew she wasn't the kind of person who made idle threats.

"Maybe later, sweetie," I replied with a shrug. Kitty just grinned mirthlessly at me as she sold a sweating fat man a fifty cent cigar from her tray of smokables. Kitty may not have been wearing a lot of clothes, but I was willing to bet that there was some serious hardware hidden in the tray she was carrying. The kind of hardware that makes loud banging noises and creates large holes in people. In a fight, Kitty is like a ghost - hard to see and harder to hit. But she didn't seem to have any problem finding her targets. Because she looks like a kid, a lot of people didn't seem to realize just how dangerous she can be.

As I approached Logan's table, I could see that he was wearing his trademark white suit and he was watching me through narrowed eyes. Hank was standing next to Logan's table, looking like a shaved gorilla who had been stuffed into a circus-tent-sized dark suit. He was keeping an eye on everyone who made the mistake of looking for a split-second too long in Logan's direction. Another tough-guy named Scott was brooding in the shadows behind the table. It was dark, but I could barely make him out by the glint of his red sunglasses. You never see him without them.

Just to complete the picture, there were a couple of hotties sitting at the table with Logan. One of them was Mystique. She's an out-and-out assassin - a killer-for-hire without mercy or qualms. She was dressed, as always, in nothing but her trademark blue. Even her eyeshadow and lipstick was blue. That was strange, but I had to admit that she somehow made that work. She and Logan went way back. The other chippie was a Japanese woman in the traditional garb of a geisha. I didn't know her name. And as near as I could tell, she never spoke in anything other than Japanese, and I'd never heard her speak to anyone but Logan. But people call her Deathstrike and the word on the street was that she was just as dangerous as Mystique.

I didn't bother to ask permission before I sat down. Once I was settled into a chair, I looked up at Hank.

"All this for me? I'm flattered."

Hank snorted, "I thought about asking the Mayor to loan me the National Guard, but I wasn't sure where to park the tanks."

Then Hank gave both of us a dead serious look, "You two play nice. I mean it."

Logan's only reply was to give Hank a crooked smile. Then he looked me and asked, "How's Marie doing?"

Like I said, there's a lot of history revolving around me, Marie, and Logan. And that means there's one subject that Logan and I have to be polite about, no matter what.

"She's fine," I replied. "She said to say 'hello'."

That last part was true. Marie had asked me to tell him that just before I left the office.

You know, I can see Logan with either Mystique or Deathstrike. I can see Logan and Ororo. I can even see Logan with me - after all, that's actually happened. But, dear merciful God in heaven, I'll never be able understand Logan and Marie. Or maybe I just don't want to.

Logan nodded slowly as his two lethal and elegantly-dressed bitches tried to stare holes into me.

"I wanted to talk to you about a guy named Xavier," I continued. "Dr. Charles Xavier. The word is that you've had dealings with him."

Logan didn't even blink, "Yeah. He has some crazy ideas about eugenics or something like that."

"'Genetics' not 'eugenics'," I corrected.

Logan shrugged, "Not exactly my thing, Dom. I run a gang. The mad-scientist stuff is for other people. So why're you interested in this guy?"

A pretty waitress was standing next to me. "Bourbon. Straight up," I ordered without looking at her.

"You bet, ma'am!" the waitress answered brightly. I managed to stop myself from turning my head. It was the new girl in Logan's gang. Her name was Kristy Nord. The word was that she was a real up-and-comer. Logan had a good percentage of his heavy hitters here, but despite what I'd said, all of this security wasn't about me. Logan and his bunch were keeping together for a reason. It was going too far to say that they were scared, but something was making them put on a pretty impressive show of force.

"Someone's hired me to find this Xavier guy - he's gone missing. What did he want from you?" I asked.

Again, Logan didn't hesitate. If he was lying, he was doing a fantastic job, "Xavier talks a lot about a race of super-men. But it ain't the usual bullshit - it's not about color, or religion, or crap like that. He thinks something's happened - something to do with that 'genetics' stuff - that's making people be born who are special. People who can do things that regular folks can't."

Kristy put a shotglass in front of me. I immediately downed it and handed it back to her. After all, Logan was buying.

"You say he's not political?" I said slowly. So far, Logan hadn't said anything about the Professor that I hadn't already heard. But it never hurts to have other people go over the same ground again. They might provide a few details you didn't know.

Logan shook his head, "Nah. I can smell a Nazi or a Commie a mile away. He ain't into that, but he's a bookworm with an idea, Dom. And those guys... well... sometimes those bastards can be the most dangerous people you can imagine."

I knew a little about what had happened to Logan just after the Great War. He didn't talk to many people about it, but there was a time when we did. Mostly in bed.

"So this guy's a scientist with a cause," I said reasonably. "What'd he want from you?"

Logan grinned tightly, "He thinks me and my people are what he's looking for - special people who can do special things. He calls it the 'X-Factor', and he says we have it. He wanted to do the lab-rat routine on us: medical exams, blood samples, that kind of thing."

The shotglass was back and I put it to my lips without drinking in an effort to hide my expression. This Xavier guy had come to Logan - of all the damned people on Earth - and then asked him to pee in a bottle, turn his head and cough, and then hop onto an exam table? Dear God in heaven, he obviously didn't have a clue what had happened to Logan up in Canada...

I drank my whiskey and carefully put the empty glass back on the table. Then I asked the only possible follow-up question.

"Did you kill him?" I asked quietly.

Everyone tensed - even the pretty blonde gangster who was reaching for my glass.

Logan took a deep breath before he answered, "No. The guy didn't mean any harm. And he didn't have anything to do with... Look, the guy didn't mean any harm. So I let it go."

Not saying anything, I stared into Logan's eyes, looking for some clue of what to believe.

"Do you think I killed him?" Logan asked. Mystique shifted slightly in her chair. The Japanese woman simply stared at me. Kristy left the shotglass and took a step back, keeping her hands free as she balanced on the balls of her feet, ready for anything.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "There was a time when you didn't much hesitate about that sort of thing, Logan. And it sure sounds like the Doc said just about the dumbest thing anyone could say to you."

"Logan was pretty ticked off," Hank interrupted from off to the side. "But he didn't kill Xavier. And he didn't have anyone else do it."

It's never smart to look away from people like Logan, Mystique, and Deathstrike. So I didn't. Which meant that Logan and I were staring into each other's eyes as I kept asking him questions.

"So why didn't you kill him, Logan?" I asked that so softly that you could barely hear me above Ororo's singing. "He said pretty much the one thing anyone could say to you that's an immediate death sentence."

Logan actually blinked and looked away first. Hey, there's a first time for everything.

"Ororo cooled me off," he said with a nod towards the stage.

I nodded slowly. "So do you know what happened to Xavier?"

Logan shook his head, "No, but I figure he might have tried someone else after I said 'no'."

My eyes narrowed.

"Talk to Pietro," Logan suggested. And that did make an awful lot of sense.

I got to my feet, "Thanks for the drink, Logan."

"Dom..." Logan said suddenly as I began walking away.

I paused and looked back over my shoulder.

Logan seemed to consider his words before speaking again, "Tell Marie that I said 'hi'."

I nodded. "Sure."

Hank tucked my chair back into Logan's table. "If you ever decide that you're tired of free-lancing..." he whispered to me, letting the rest of the sentence hang unsaid.

"I'm not a team player, Hank," I replied. "Even when I try to be one, it just doesn't work out in the long run. I'm not good at doing what I'm told."

Hank just smiled. The man has huge teeth.

As I walked out the door, Ororo and I exchanged glances. She was singing a slow and smoking-hot version of "My Silent Love", a song that had become fairly popular lately.

_"I reach for you like I'd reach for a star,_  
_Worshiping you from afar,_  
_Living with my silent love._  
_I'm like a flame dying out in the rain,_  
_Only the ashes remain,_  
_Smoldering like my silent love._  
_How I long to tell all the things_  
_I have planned._  
_Still, it's wrong to tell,_  
_You would not understand._  
_You go along never dreaming I care,_  
_Loving somebody somewhere,_  
_Leaving me my silent love."_

As I walked out into the parking lot, it occurred to me that out of all the women who had drifted in and out of Logan's life as either lovers or friends, only a few had never given up on him. Unlike the rest, they'd made themselves a part of his constant struggle to be more than a snarling animal. Ororo was one of them.

I definitely wasn't a member of the club. And that suddenly didn't feel right.

* * *

The gunsels who jumped me outside of the club were better than average. And against most people, they would have gotten the job done.

Unfortunately for them, I'm not "most people".

The headlights of a car pulling into the parking lot flickered into a row of parked cars. And that was all it took for me to catch a glimpse of the guy with the shotgun who was crouched between a couple of parked sedans. I immediately dove for cover, yelling at everyone else around me to do the same thing.

Maybe the guy with the shotgun just didn't have a clear shot at me. Or maybe he was too nice of a guy for his line of work and hesitated because of all the people who were crowded around the front of the club. But he had a couple of partners who were carrying handguns, and they either had a better view of me, or didn't care about the possibility of others getting caught in the crossfire.

A storm of bullets split the air around me as I scrambled behind a tall decorative stone wall that framed the walkway into the club. My .45 was already in my hand as more shots slammed into my cover. Bullets were spalling chips of stone and concrete in all directions as I planted the toe of my size eight onto a waist-high decorative lion-head and used it for leverage to pop myself up over the top of the wall. The guys who were after me had assumed that I would appear from one of the sides of the wall. So they never saw me coming. I took out the shotgunner with one shot - he never really did get a chance to shoot - and then dropped back down under cover. I'd seen my shot hit the target directly in center-mass. He was out of the fight, and probably either dead or dying.

I was getting ready for my next scoot-and-shoot when everything went white and my eardrums seemed to cave-in.

It took a few seconds to recover. When I finally got my act together, spots were dancing in front of my eyes and my ears were ringing like distant church-bells.

The night's entertainment was standing in what was left of the front-door of the club. Residual lightning played around her body and ruffled her hair. Some decorative wooden molding on either side of the now shattered front door had caught fire.

Ororo gave me an inscrutable look and said something. I couldn't quite make it out and I shook my head and pointed to one of my ears with the hand that wasn't holding my gun.

"They are gone," she said louder.

That's when I realized that Kurt was standing next to me. With his help, I painfully climbed to my feet. Then I surveyed the wreckage in the parking lot - at least two cars were on fire. Then I turned and gave Ororo a long, steady look.

She wordlessly turned around and walked back into Remy's.

"Are you all right, liebchen?" Kurt asked with a fang-filled grin as he brushed dust off of me - with special attention to the front of my jacket and the seat of my pants, I might note. As per usual, he had appeared out of nowhere. He does that a lot.

"You people have to learn how to be a little more subtle," I groused as I dropped the hammer on my automatic and tucked it back into my shoulder holster. Then I firmly removed Kurt's hands from my body. Maybe under other circumstances...

Kurt grinned at me, and then bent over and retrieved my hat.

"We are indeed not very subtle, Domino. And that is why we are the best we are at what we do. Assuming that it is still intact, may I escort you to your car?"

"Not yet," I said tiredly. "I need to check the bodies and see if I can figure out who they are."

Kurt wordlessly nodded towards the parking lot. Following his gaze, I could see one of the guys who had been shooting at me. Or rather, I could see what was left of him. The only reason I knew he was one of the shooters was because I recognized the little bit of his jacket that was still on his body. There was another body in the middle of the parking lot. A heavy revolver was laying next to it and the clothing on the body was burning merrily.

"Have fun," Kurt laughed. "But I recommend you hurry. The polizei will be here soon. Oh, and it goes without saying that Logan will not like it if you ever again bring one of your fights to his doorstep."

Then Kurt turned on his heel and walked back into the club. I stared daggers into his receding back, but it didn't have much effect.

It was about then that the gas tank in one of the burning cars exploded.

* * *

The parking lot was in flames, but I managed to find one of the guys who'd tried to kill me who was still moderately-alive. There wasn't a lot left of him, but I dragged him away from the blaze anyway. A quick search of his pockets didn't turn up anything except for a tiny amount of cash and some reloads for his handgun.

Actually, that was kind of interesting. This guy was completely clean of any kind of identification. That was a kind of professionalism that wandered away from "I kill for a gang" and into "I kill for a government".

The shooter coughed and whispered something. I put my ear next to his mouth.

"Who are you? Why did you try to kill me?" I asked.

He moaned something and then died.

Sitting next to the corpse, I considered what he'd said.

Phoenix? What the hell was that about? Had I heard him correctly?

There was now quite a crowd standing in front of "Remy's". Some were watching the fire. Some were doing their best to get away. I could see that some of Logan's people were also watching the crowd - looking for anyone whose reaction didn't seem right. They were looking for accomplices to the attack.

Remy himself came out and mingled with the crowd. He gave me a long, dirty look as waiters and waitresses began serving free drinks to the people who were sticking around. I suppose this little incident had cut pretty deep into the night's profit margin.

Off in the distance, I could hear the first sirens.

* * *

Marie sniffed suspiciously, wrinkled her nose, and then said, "You smell like you've been to the world's worst barbecue. What were the serving - hotdogs soaked in gasoline?"

"That's as good a description as any," I replied as I flopped into a chair. In fact, except for the bed and a dresser, the chair was the only furniture in her tiny apartment.

Then Marie suddenly looked nervous, "What happened?"

I shrugged as I kicked off my shoes. My feet were killing me. Wiggling my toes was an almost spiritual experience. "I went to see Logan. We talked. Then, after I left, somebody took a shot at me. Three guys, as a matter of fact. I got one. Ororo took out the other two. Cars burned and exploded. And then the cops came and everyone took turns lying to them. In other words, it was just another epic and marvelous day in Loganland."

"Anybody hurt?" Marie said evenly as she poured me a stiff drink. There was a time when she had been a full-time occupant of "Loganland". In fact, I was the person who'd talked her into leaving.

"Just the shooters," I growled. "Bunch of damned fools, if you ask me. Even if..."

I stopped there because I'd been about to say, "Even if they'd killed me, then they would have had to deal with Logan and his people." There was no point in talking about getting killed. It would just worry Marie.

"Who were they?" Marie continued as she handed me the glass and sat down on the edge of her bed. She was wearing a short and thin robe. And I was pretty sure that - at best - all she had underneath was a pair of panties. You know, having pretty girls who weren't wearing much in the way of clothes hand me whiskey wasn't a bad way to kill time. It was definitely better than having people shoot at me.

"No idea," I answered with a shake of my head. "Thanks to Ororo, there wasn't much left to ID."

"And what did Logan have say?" There's always something in Marie's eyes when she talks about him. I wish I could say that it didn't bother me.

"He did talk to Xavier. It turns out that this Xavier guy is a bug on the subject of people with powers. He wanted to examine Logan and the other people in Logan's gang. But Logan said no."

Marie's eyes narrowed as she considered what I'd said.

"Logan said that he didn't kill Xavier. And I believe him," I added.

Marie nodded and relaxed a little.

"Then he said I should talk to Pietro," I added.

Marie pursed her lips as she thought that over. I have to stop myself from kissing her whenever she does that.

"That makes sense," she said. "If this Xavier guy wants to talk to people with powers, and Logan said no, then Pietro and his bunch are the next best bet."

"Yep," I agreed.

Marie subsided as she thought it over.

Then I got to something I really didn't want to do, but I'd pretty much promised...

"Logan says hello," I said through gritted teeth.

Marie smiled as I did my best to keep a neutral expression on my face. Then she got to her feet.

"You need a bath," she said. Then she vanished into the bathroom and I could hear water splashing into the tub.

I dozed off, but when I awoke, Marie was in the middle of pulling off my pants. She was already heart-attack naked, and I have no idea why God was thinking when he decided to make one woman so perfect.

Then my pants were past my ankles, and Marie efficiently stripped off my used-to-be-white-now-sorta-gray socks. Standing up, she dropped the pants on the bed and tossed the socks in the general direction of her overflowing laundry basket. And I was no longer even a little sleepy as I began fumbling with the buttons of my shirt.

Marie stopped me with a gentle touch.

"I like undressing you," she said with a smile that was as old and mysterious and inviting as Eve.

I nodded and leaned back in the chair.

* * *

Really, the bathtub was too small for both of us. And when we get... uhm... "active", we sometimes splash lots of water onto the bathroom floor. And that pisses off Mr. Mortimer, who lives downstairs. So we try not to do that, but it isn't always easy.

* * *

It was hot and humid when I woke up. I slid carefully out of bed so as not to disturb Marie. Then - naked as the day I was born - I padded over to the only window in Marie's apartment. It looked out over the neon-lit downtown.

It was raining. I cracked the window open to let a whisper of rain-cooled air slide over my bare body. My reflection was visible in the partially-opened window. I stared at my light blue skin, the darker blue birthmark that circled one of my eyes, the stiff hair that I had to keep cut so short, the thin features, the too many scars, and the hard body that didn't really fit the conventional idea of attractive.

I didn't really know what Marie saw in me. And that scared me. Because maybe one day she'd look at me and see what I saw, instead of whatever it was that she thought she was seeing. And what would happen then? Would she leave me?

Would she go back to Logan?

Closing my eyes, I rested my forehead against the glass of the window. It was wonderfully cool.

"Dom?" Marie quietly called out.

I turned around. "I'm here, sweetie."

She threw the covers off of the bed and sat up. The neon red and orange light that was coming through the window made her body seemed to gleam. And the white streak in her hair looked like a tendril of fire.

"Come back to bed," she ordered. From the way she said it, there was no doubt what she had in mind.

I did as I was told. She took me into her arms and kissed me.

Maybe someday Marie would finally wake up and realize what was real and what was illusion, but tonight wasn't the night.

* * *

"Have you found anything?" Emma asked. The worry she was feeling was obvious even over the phone.

It was just past nine and Marie and I were back in the office. Marie had poured me my first cup of coffee and delivered it with a kiss that could have doubled as a tonsil inspection. Ever since a near-incident involving a surprise visit by the landlord while Marie was performing some under-the-desk amateur gynecology on me, we'd put a strict "no-sex-in-the-office" rule into effect. But kissing and touching was still okay. In fact, we both agreed that it was a necessary part of keeping up office morale.

I shifted the phone to my left hand as I picked up the coffee cup with my right hand. I'm ambidextrous, but some habits persist despite that.

"Logan says he talked to Xavier, but nothing much else happened. Xavier left unmolested and that's the last Logan heard of him," I reported.

"Do you believe him?" Emma asked.

"I don't have any reason not to," I said warily. "And Logan's not given to lying. I sometimes think the cops could close his operation down if they just hauled him in and started asking questions. He has a habit of looking people dead in the eye and saying just whatever the hell is on his mind. And besides, someone tried to kill me right after I talked to Logan. That's probably not a coincidence."

"What!?" Emma yelled.

I took a sip from my coffee, "Three hitmen tried to toe-tag me right after I talked to Logan. Which I guess means that someone's picked up on the fact that I'm looking for the Professor. And they apparently don't want me poking my nose into the wrong places."

"Are you all right?" Emma gasped.

Despite the fact she couldn't see me, I shrugged, "Sure. Actually, one of Logan's people shut down the fight before it got too nasty. That's one of the reasons I don't think Logan's involved."

"So now what?" Emma persisted.

"I'm gonna check on a guy named Pietro. He's a small timer with a lot of big ideas. And he's someone that might have caught the Professor's eye."

"Anything else?"

I thought for a while before responding, "By the way, does 'Phoenix' mean anything to you?"

Emma was silent for a moment, and then said, "Do you mean the town in Arizona?"

"Maybe, but I don't think so. It was something one of the guys who tried to kill me said just before he croaked."

"I'm sorry, Dom, but it doesn't really bring anything to mind."

"Well... maybe it's nothing," I said thoughtfully. "People do say a lot of strange things towards the end."

"Very well, Dom. Thank you for the report. And please keep me posted," Emma replied.

"Will do," I shot back. Then I hung up the phone. You have to keep in touch with the clients, but it's a good idea to be as brief as possible. Otherwise, the clients began to get the idea that they should be a more direct part of the investigation. And that could get awkward in a hurry.

I drained my coffee cup and got to my feet.

"Pietro?" Marie asked, looking at me as she filed away receipts on some very recently paid bills.

"Pietro," I replied.

* * *

Pietro was soaking wet, naked, and more than a little surprised.

"Don't even think about running," I said as I pressed the muzzle of my automatic between his eyes.

Pietro gave my gun a cross-eyed look... and then he looked past it at me and gulped.

"Domino! Uhm... hello?" he said hesitantly. Actually, he wasn't doing too bad for a guy who'd just stepped out of the shower and had a gun shoved into his face. Pietro's brave and stubborn. It's just that he's not very smart.

It's usually tough to find Pietro. And it's even tougher to hold onto him once you've got him. So you have to set the stage and play all of the angles if you want to catch him and keep him.

In this case, the stage was the small and very messy bathroom in Mortimer Toynbee's small and very messy apartment. Pietro and Mortimer were pretty close, so it was a good bet that Pietro would eventually show up there for a booty call. In this case, I'd gotten lucky (big surprise) and Pietro just happened to be at Mortimer's place when I checked it out.

That's how Pietro came to make the acquaintance of my automatic as soon as he got out of the shower. The bathroom was pretty tight, and that meant Pietro didn't have any room to maneuver. That was definitely in my favor, but even that wasn't enough. Just to make sure I had him, I reached down with my free hand and took a firm grip of a part of Pietro's anatomy that's very near and dear to him.

"If you try to run off, this stays behind," I said flatly.

Pietro swallowed hard.

"What did you do with Mortimer?" he asked nervously. What do you know? Pietro actually does think about somebody besides himself.

I jerked my head towards the bedroom, "He's handcuffed to the radiator. By the way, thanks for the ball-gag. It came in handy."

Pietro winced and then he shook his head, "Come on, Dom! What the hell is wrong with you? We used to be friends!"

The was the wrong thing to say. I squeezed and Pietro yelped. I'm pretty sure it was more a matter of surprise than pain - I hadn't really been too rough on him. But Pietro is one of those guys who has to learn everything the hard way. I had to make sure he understood who was in charge, and that I wasn't screwing around.

"We used to be on the same team!" I yelled back at him, my anger finally bubbling to the surface. "But you sold me out, Pietro! Remember?"

Pietro took a shaky breath, "That was a misunderstanding!"

This time I went for pain instead of surprise. Pietro's scream was much more heartfelt.

"You know something?" I snarled at him. "You sound just like a little girl when you scream. And if you keep jerking me around, I just might make that into a permanent condition. And just for the record, leaving me to face a big chunk of the Mexican Army all by myself was not a damned 'misunderstanding'! You hung me out to dry!"

He held his hands up helplessly, "For pity's sake, Dom! Let's talk about this like reasonable people!"

"Sure," I said as I kept a good grip on the family jewels and a gun in his face. I could be completely reasonable while not giving him an inch of leeway.

Pietro sighed.

"I'm going to ask you some questions, Pietro," I said sweetly. "But before I do, I want you to ask yourself the following question: what am I going to do to you if I decide that you're lying?"

There was a brief pause as Pietro considered the range of terrible options.

"What do you want to know?" he asked resignedly.

* * *

It turned out that Pietro had heard of Xavier. And he was definitely interested in talking to him. But he swore to me that he'd never actually met Xavier and hadn't even known that he was missing, much less who might have snatched him. Since his generative organs were at stake, I was pretty sure Pietro was telling the truth.

I handcuffed Pietro to the radiator, right next to Mortimer. Then I took off the ball-gag that was in Mortimer's mouth. Hey, there's no point in being needlessly cruel.

"Uhm, Dom?" Mortimer said timidly. He wasn't wearing much - a black-leather harness-thing was around his surprisingly well-defined chest and a matching pair of shorts. Crotchless shorts. I made him wrap a sheet around his waist before I locked him up.

"Yeah?" I replied. Actually, I was surprised that Mortimer was willing to talk to me. I was pretty tough on him back when we were on the same team. Towards the end, he seemed terrified of me.

"These cuffs are a little loose. Just thought you'd want to know."

"Oh, for God's sake, Mortimer!" Pietro snarled.

I checked the cuffs, and Mortimer was right. The problem was that the cuffs were the kind you use for playtime, not for serious restraint.

"I don't think there's anything I can do. They're just not very good handcuffs," I told Mortimer.

Mortimer nodded understandingly, "Yeah. That's okay, Dom. Business hasn't been so hot. We're having to cut corners."

"Mortimer..." Pietro said through gritted teeth.

I gave Pietro a hard look, "Hey, cut it out. Mortimer and I are having a civilized conversation here."

Still fuming, Pietro subsided.

"I'll call Fred and tell him to pick you guys up," I said to Mortimer.

He sighed in relief, "Thanks, Dom. Uh... could you tell him it's no hurry?"

Feeling strangely virtuous, I replied, "No problem."

"I'm surrounded by idiots and maniacs," Pietro said mournfully as Mortimer snuggled up against him.

I turned to leave.

"Can I at least have some clothes?" Pietro shouted after me.

I looked over my shoulder.

Mortimer caught my eye and said with a sly grin, "No. He's just fine."

Okaaaaay...

"Uhm, yeah," I said.

As I walked out the door, Pietro was muttering curses and threats. On the other hand, Mortimer seemed pretty happy with the situation.

Walking away from Mortimers's apartment building, I couldn't help but notice that my case was increasingly getting nowhere. So far, the only sign of progress was the fact that somebody had tried to kill me. And there weren't that many people that fit the criteria of being the type that Xavier would find interesting. I was running out of people to talk to.

Except for one. One that I'd rather avoid.

I took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. I really didn't have a lot of choice.

This was going to be dangerous. And I better not tell Marie what I was planning. She wouldn't let me do it.

* * *

Visiting Erik is always an experience. Like a lot of people, he had pretty good set of reasons to be unhappy with me, so I knew he wouldn't be receiving me with open arms and a big smile. And I wasn't terribly surprised when I eventually found myself manacled upside down to an iron wall. A very cold iron wall, I might add.

"Domino... it is such a surprise to see you," Erik said thoughtfully. He was wearing one of his specially tailored dark-purple suits. Yeah, I know that sounds kind of fruity, but believe me, Erik makes it work.

Erik Lensherr was the only guy who had an organization that was comparable to Logan's. So far, they'd more-or-less kept their distance from one another. But when you got down to it, this town really wasn't big enough for the two of them. One day, they would inevitably duke it out. My plan was to be on an extended vacation with Marie when that finally happened. Maybe in Hawaii or Tahiti or someplace like that.

"It's funny," I said as calmly as I could manage - Erik has an almost pathological respect for coolness under pressure - "just a little while ago I was talking to Pietro. The situation was strangely similar."

Erik raised an eyebrow. Pietro is his son.

"And how is Pietro doing?" he asked interestedly.

I decided that it wasn't time to tell Erik that his only son had a boyfriend - and was dressing him in a crotchless black-leather pony-boy outfit. Complete with tail. You don't want to know the details about the tail.

"He seemed a little put out the last time I saw him," I replied honestly enough.

Erik made a disgusted face, "Is he still associating with those... individuals?"

"You mean Mortimer, Fred, and Dominic?"

"Yes."

"Yeah. He is. Uh, Erik, this upside-down bullshit is giving me a headache."

He didn't say or do anything, but I slowly rotated right-side up. It was a relief to feel the blood draining from my head. Of course, 'do the prisoner a small kindness that could be easily reversed,' was one of the first lessons of 'Interrogation 101'. Erik and I had apparently read the same manual.

"You know, letting me all the way down would be kinda nice..." I suggested.

Erik just shrugged and said, "You have demonstrated a tendency to manifest unpleasant suprises, Domino. I prefer having you in a position where you cannot suddenly bring concealed weapons into the conversation."

I sighed, "Are you still pissed off about Boston?"

He paused and took a deep breath before replying, "You beat me with a baseball bat, Domino. Then you kicked me in the face while I was lying on the ground. Then you stole my wallet."

"That was just business," I declared heatedly. "It was nothing personal."

"None-the-less, I took it quite personally," Erik said in a tone of voice that managed to combine offended dignity, hurt feelings, and the distinct possibility that he was going do something really horrible to me.

"Have you ever heard of a guy named Charles Xavier?" I asked hurriedly. I needed him to be thinking about something - anything - else than past disagreements.

"I'm asking the questions here, Domino," Erik said mildly. The manacles on my wrists - which were really just short lengths of chain controlled by Erik - tightened suggestively.

"Okay," I said quickly.

He nodded, "So... why did you come here?"

"To ask you about Charles Xavier," I answered without hesitation. Hey, it was a completely correct answer.

Erik sighed, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Headache?" I asked sympathetically.

"Yes," he said slowly. "Oddly enough, I tend to develop one whenever you are around."

"Sorry."

Then Erik opened his eyes again and looked at me, "You know, Domino, the 'in the clutches of a master villain'-experience usually involves a little more fear on the part of the prisoner. You simply are not doing your part."

I shrugged. That's hard to do when you're spread-eagled, but I managed. "Sorry. Do you want me to cry or something?"

He thought about that, "No. I wouldn't believe it was real."

"How about if I begged for mercy?"

He sighed, "Likewise. That's just not you."

Then Erik made a negligent-looking gesture. The chains around my hands and feet fell away and I dropped about a yard to the stone floor. I landed on the balls of my feet, in a crouch.

"What do you want to know about Charles Xavier?" Erik asked interestedly.

"Do you know where he is?" I asked as I rubbed the kinks out of my shoulders.

"He has isolated himself with a young lady named Jean Grey."

I raised an eyebrow at Erik, "They're shacked up?"

Erik actually looked offended at what I'd said, "I believe their relationship is more one of student-and-teacher than what you are implying. As I understand it, Miss Grey has manifested some abilities that are of interest to Doctor Xavier."

"So where are they?"

"The last I heard, in a rented estate just outside of town. I do not know the address, but I'm sure you can unearth it. Apparently Doctor Xavier prizes his privacy, so he's being quite secretive."

I frowned at him, "Why do you know all of this?"

"That is none of your business, Domino."

There wasn't really a lot I could say to that.

Erik turned away from me. The door he was walking towards swung open on its own. "Get out," he said. "And do not come back here. Ever."

"Nice talking to you, Erik," I said to his back as he left the room.

* * *

"I should kick your ass!" Marie yelled at me. Trust me when I say this - Marie can yell with the best of them. Come to think of it, she can also kick ass with the best of them.

"Not now, Marie. Please," I answered tiredly.

"It's bad enough that you went to see Logan! But, ERIK!? Are you out of your mind?"

"I had to do it," I said as reasonably as I could manage.

Marie sat down in her chair with a defiant thud. Her arms were firmly crossed over her breasts and there were tears in her eyes. "Oh... bullshit! You like that sort of thing, Dom! You like taking crazy chances!"

I opened my mouth and then slowly shut it. What was I going to say? Tell the truth and agree with her? Or lie and say she was wrong? Neither one seemed terribly smart at the moment.

"I'm sorry," I said - well aware of how lame that sounded, "but I am who I am, Marie. The trail was getting cold, and it was going to just plain freeze solid unless I talked to Erik. And he gave me what I needed."

She didn't say anything. But she wasn't giving me an inch. She never does.

"I called in some favors and talked to some of Logan's people," she finally said.

I... didn't like the sound of that, but Marie was a grown woman and had a right to talk to whoever she wanted to. And she still had a lot of friends in Logan's crew - like Logan himself.

"You were right about how tense they are," Marie continued, running a hand through her hair as she did so. "The word's been out for a while - people with powers have been disappearing. Somebody is after psychics in particular. But every now and then they pick off somebody who has abilities that are psychic-like - precogs, and far-seers for example. That's why Logan and his people are travelling in packs."

"I see," I said with a short nod of my head. "Thanks. That's interesting."

Then I sat down at my desk and picked up the phone. I knew a guy down at the county records office.

* * *

Believe it or not, Xavier had bought a mansion. The place was located just outside of the city, and it was huge. Once upon a time, an "old-money" family had lived there, but the family line more-or-less died out a few decades back. According to my source in the records office, Dr. Xavier got a darn good deal.

"I remember talking to the realtor," my contact told me. "He said working with Xavier was just plain scary. It was like the guy could read minds or something."

I said something suitably bland in reply. Then I got the address information and hung up.

"I got 'em," I said to Marie after I was done. She'd come down far enough from her snit to look interested.

I told her what I'd found out.

"Now what?" Marie asked.

"I get my muscular - yet lovely - ass out there and check it out," I replied reasonably enough.

"Why?" Marie asked bluntly. "The job was to find Xavier. You found him. Give Frost a call, tell her what you know, and that she owes you the rest of the payment for the job by the end of the week."

That made me hesitate. After all, Marie was mostly right...

Then I shook my head, "I've got a strong lead here, but I need to make sure. I have to check everything out and see if there hasn't been any confusion or mistakes. And I have to make sure that Xavier is actually in residence. Then I can call Emma."

Marie examined me closely as I mentally kicked myself for calling our rather attractive client by her first name.

"Okay," Marie said with a wary nod. "That makes sense."

"Damn right it does," I said busily. Then I gave her a long kiss and bolted for the door.

* * *

My guy at the county office wasn't understating the new Xavier place. It was huge. Of course, a place that big normally needs a staff to run, clean, and maintain it. As far as I knew, Xavier and his "student" were the only people there. So all I had to do was wait for sunset, and then look for the lights.

The mansion itself was dead, but there was a small house separate from the mansion itself. Back in the day, it had probably been quarters for the grounds-keeper or some other kind of servant. There was light coming out of a couple of first-floor windows.

I ghosted my way across the grounds of the mansion. I'm good at that sort of thing. Then I peered through a ground-floor window that was obligingly not shuttered.

Bingo.

An older man, bald and in a wheelchair, was seated at a table with a pretty redhead. A pair of floor lamps provided light, a ceiling fan rotated lazily, and a radio was softly playing a Glen Miller tune. They were running through a test of some kind using Zenner cards. You know... those cards with the symbols on them? One person looks at the symbol, while the other person tries to guess what the other is looking at?

Of course, for some people, there's no guessing involved. Instead, it's something else.

Which brought me to "enough is enough." I was trying to be sneaky around two people with powers of the mind. That's not a good idea. Since I had what I needed, I immediately began backing out of the area.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

How do you deal with someone like Xavier and Grey? Obviously it wouldn't be easy. And the dumbest way to do it would be to send men in after them. Purely as a tactical exercise, I'd considered the issue over the years. I kept coming back to the same answer: you hit psychics from a distance. You don't give them a chance to bring their special abilities to bear. You strike from outside of the range of their powers, and you strike hard.

As I was trying to pull out of the area, I heard the distinctive "ka-chunk, ka-chunk" of light mortar fire. The mortars must have been pretty close, because within just a few seconds the first gas shells began impacting around the house.

I managed to get a few hundred yards away before the gas finally knocked me out.

* * *

I woke up in disorganized stages, fading in and out of reality multiple times. To this day, I don't have a clue what kind of gas they used. But whatever it was, it did quite a number on me - and gave me one hell of a hangover to boot.

With a groan, I rolled over. A chain padlocked around my neck clinked and clattered. It was secured to a heavy metal staple that was set into the concrete floor. I was lying in what looked like a really big basement. A bare-bulb hanging from the ceiling provided some stark light, but I couldn't see the full extent of the room. My clothes were gone and I was cuffed at the wrists and ankles. My hands were secured behind my back. Taking a good look at the cuffs around my ankles, I noticed they were pretty good quality.

"You know, this job features a little more bondage than usual," I muttered to myself.

"I'm afraid that tends to happen around me," a woman's amused voice said from off to the side.

Looking up, I saw my lovely client sitting cross-legged in a battered wooden kitchen chair. The chair looked like it had been used to tame lions. However, I must say that Emma looked fantastic. She was wearing a daring outfit - kinda 19th centuryish - that showed a lot of creamy white skin among scattered bits of white leather and satin. It was definitely a good look for her.

The chain running from my neck to the floor rattled as I struggled into a sitting position. The floor was cold and gritty under my bare skin.

It occurred to me that karma was getting me back for what I'd done to Pietro and Mortimer.

"Hi, Emma," I said tiredly. "Don't you think this is just a little too much?"

Emma firmly shook her head, "Domino, I have far too much respect for you to even consider giving you the slightest semblance of a chance."

"Then how about telling me what's going on?" I shot back at her.

She shrugged, "The Inner Circle - the organization that I am a member of - has a considerable interest in Dr. Xavier and Miss Grey. Especially Miss Grey. We knew Xavier had contacted her, but we lost all track of them afterwards. Finding them was a very high priority."

"So you hired a detective to track them down," I finished for her.

"As a matter of fact, I hired the best detective in town," Emma said with catlike amusement.

"I'm flattered, but I'm here to tell you that it wasn't that hard to find Xavier and the girl. It doesn't look good for you and your outfit that you couldn't figure it out on your own."

She didn't seem insulted, "Actually, I have to agree. If the Inner Circle has a serious flaw, it's a certain tendency to look for esoteric explanations and solutions instead of commonplace ones. We assumed that two missing psychics would have to be found via more exotic means than asking questions and checking real-estate listings."

I frowned, "How do you know how I found them?"

Emma didn't respond. She just smiled. And suddenly, despite all the fuzziness in my head, something clicked.

"You're a psychic, too," I said.

She seemed delighted at my cleverness, "I periodically read the mind of your charming secretary and lover. Since you tell her everything, actual reports from you weren't really required - although I did appreciate the ones you gave me. It was from Marie that I got the address where Dr. Xavier and Miss Grey were staying."

"Okay... but who were the guys who tried to take me down at the nightclub? They don't seem to fit in anywhere."

Emma looked disgusted, "There are other groups besides the Inner Circle who are interested in Charles Xavier and what he is seeking. Apparently there was a leak somewhere on our side - and one of those groups found out that you were working for us. They decided to slow us down by killing you. Fortunately, they underestimated you and only sent a few common thugs. My apologies for the mistake."

"Gee, thanks," I grumbled.

"If it makes you feel better, the individual responsible for the leak has paid a very high price for his foolishness."

I nodded slowly, "Great. But there's a more immediate issue - now that I've found Xavier and Grey, what happens to me?"

For the first time, Emma seemed to hesitate.

"The Inner Circle doesn't like loose ends," she finally said.

My mouth went dry as I took another look at the cuffs on my ankles. Yep, they were really, really good handcuffs.

"But there is one way out," Emma continued.

I sighed, "Let me guess: I have to work for you."

Emma nodded, "I'm quite impressed with your talents, Dom. You're very useful."

"Go to hell," I spat.

"Oh, stop it, Dom. In the end, you're going to agree to work for me."

"And why's that?" I challenged,

"Because Marie is another loose end," Emma said calmly. "And neither one of us wants anything to happen to her."

And just like that, she'd won the argument. I slumped in defeat, and it was real. I was out of plans, tricks, and - apparently - wild lightning-strikes of luck.

"What does working for you mean?" I asked bitterly. "Do I end up being your personal gun-slinger, or do you have something kinkier in mind? Something else that goes along with your 'Betty Paige in White' look?"

Emma gave me an enigmatic look, "I'm sure I'll find all sorts of uses for you, Dom."

Then she put an image in my mind. It was... intimate. And sexy. And scary.

Me and my big mouth. And why the hell had I said that anyway? The idea of Emma and me...

"Actually, you really don't mind the idea at all," Emma added seriously. "I've put a lot of time, effort, and money into becoming a very attractive woman, Dom. And everyone has a submissive streak. In fact, I excel at finding it. Like many people, you just want an excuse to let yours out - like saving someone who's dear to you. That way you can be a virtuous martyr who has no choice but to serve me with complete devotion."

Oh, for Pete's sake.

"You're nuts," I growled. "And, by the way, get the hell out of my mind!"

"Actually, I do rather like that fantasy you keep having," Emma mused. "The one where you and Marie bathe and massage me - and then afterwards perform for my amusement on a candle-lit stage."

"Cut it out," I said dismissively. I wasn't thinking about any such thing until she mentioned it. She was putting things in my head. Right?

Right?

Emma laughed and got to her feet. Standing next to me, she ran a gloved hand through my hair. I tried to bite her, but I was still weak and woozy from the drugs.

"I'll tell you what," she said archly. "Once this matter with Xavier and Grey is settled, I'll be back. And then the two will discuss your future as my servant and agent. I think it will be fun. We'll make a day of it."

Then she knelt next to me and pressed her lips to mine. I resisted for maybe a second. And then my body was pressing eagerly against hers and my tongue was enthusiastically probing her mouth.

Emma purred in surprised delight.

I nuzzled against the side of her face, my tongue sliding through her long hair so I could tease her ear. She had one hand on the chain around my neck, so she could control me better. The other hand was cupping one of my breasts as her thumb flicked my nipple.

"Really, Dom, I assumed this would take a little more time," Emma laughed. And then her free hand slid slowly down my body and between my legs. I spread my knees so it would be easier for her to do whatever she wanted to me.

I lost myself in sensation, blanking my mind and letting raw passion and pure heat take over. As I gently bit and nibbled Emma's face and shoulders, she expertly teased me to orgasm.

It didn't take long. Crying out as I reached climax, I buried my face against Emma's shoulder.

Emma laughed and used the chain around my neck to pull me back. For a long moment, she simply looked into my eyes. Then she kissed me long and hard.

"My turn next time," Emma whispered. Then she put an image in my mind that made me gasp in a combination of lust, surprise, fear, and eagerness.

Emma kissed me again, and then she got up and walked out of our circle of light and back into the darkness. A very solid-sounding door slammed behind her.

* * *

After she left, I spat onto the floor the pin I had pulled from Emma's cloak with my teeth. It was a pretty and expensive-looking thing: an inch-long length of silvered steel pin topped with a cloudy-white, but flawless, diamond.

It's hard to fool a psychic. After all, they can look right into your head. But there are things that will distract anyone made up of flesh and bone. Emma wanted me. So I gave her what she wanted, and Emma lost track of a few details in the process.

I could smell Emma's perfume still on my body. That was... distracting, but I gritted my teeth and firmly ignored the part of me that wanted Emma to come back and start all over again.

Damn, she did that to me on a cold concrete floor. I didn't dare imagine what she was like in an actual bed. Psychics like Emma can do incredible things to you. After all, they know exactly what you're feeling. They know what's working and what isn't. They can play your body like a master musician can work an instrument with which they've had long and intimate experience.

Sitting on the floor seemed like too much effort, so I collapsed down onto my side. It was crunch time. I needed a break and I needed it now. I carefully tested the cuffs on my wrists and ankles, but there was no joy. Whoever had cuffed me - probably Emma herself - knew what they were doing. The cuffs on my wrists were wide enough, and put on just tight enough, so that the trick where you break your thumbs in order to wiggle loose wouldn't work.

Likewise, the wrist cuffs didn't have a lot of play between them. That was deliberate. That was to make it hard for a prisoner to shove their wrists down and around their legs. A prisoner with their hands cuffed behind them has a lot less options than a prisoner with their hands in front.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then another one. What I was about to do was going to hurt.

Using a trick a New York boy named Savage taught me, I deliberately dislocated my left elbow. And... yeah... that hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. I didn't even try to hold back my scream. After that, I wiggled around until I managed to twist and squeeze my lower body through the loop of my arms.

I was sobbing by the time I reset my elbow, but my hands were now in front of my body.

After letting myself rest for a minute, I painfully picked up Emma's pin and began working on the lock in the in my wrist cuffs. Contrary to what a lot of people think, it's actually pretty tough to pick the lock on a good pair of handcuffs. In fact, it's more a matter of crazy good luck than skill.

I laughed out loud as the left-hand cuff clicked open.

* * *

I was free, but the only thing I was wearing was a few traces of Emma's perfume and lipstick. The idea that she had somehow marked me was stuck in my head. I actually think I would have held off on my escape attempt if I'd come across someplace to wash-up.

The door to the cellar wasn't locked, but there were two guards in the hallway. They were wearing some kind of blue and red uniforms. The way they moved and held their weapons suggested to me that they were the real thing: trained soldiers, not uniformed thugs.

Damn.

I opened the door just as one of the guards walked past. I was naked. He was male. That gave me all the time I needed to kick him in the face.

The other guard was either more dutiful or gay. A bullet burned past me and slammed into the corner of the door. He was shooting high because he didn't want to hit his buddy, who was currently slumped in my arms. That was admirable enough that I made a mental note not to kill him. I did a fast-draw on the pistol the unconscious guard was carrying in his belt. It was a .44 revolver. Not my weapon of choice, but a very serious and respectable shooting-iron none-the-less.

The slug from my new revolver hit the other guard in the thigh as he was lining up his second shot on me. He went down with a scream, frantically clutching at his now-spurting leg.

I took off at a run, vaulting over the other guard on my way to the stairs.

* * *

The grease monkey gawped helplessly at me as I pointed my revolver at his face.

"Give me your clothes and a dime," I ordered. I was standing in a lonely gas-station on the edge of town. It was about a mile from the old textile factory that Emma had stashed me.

The old man gulped and then did as he was told.

"Been a while since a women told me to strip," he said with rueful shake of his head as he handed me his pants and shirt. He was left with a pair of boxers and a sleeveless t-shirt. If I had to guess, I'd say he was in his sixties.

"Was she pointing a gun at you?" I asked as I pulled the pants on.

"Nope. Didn't have to."

I glanced down. He was a small guy and his feet were about the same size as mine. "The shoes, too. You can keep your socks and underwear. In fact, I demand you keep your underwear."

"Gee, thanks, lady," he grumped as he kicked his shoes towards me. "Oh, and there's a dime in the left front pocket," he added.

I pulled it out, then I hurriedly stuffed it into a nearby payphone.

It started ringing as I waited impatiently.

"C'mon!" I finally yelled on the eighth ring.

And then - thank God - Marie picked up the phone.

"What?" she said irritably.

"Sweetie, it's me," I said as fast as possible. "Get out now. Right now. And get to Logan."

There was a split-second silence.

"Dom, are you..." she began.

"I'm in the Lewiston Garage on Highway 7! Now go find Logan!" I screamed into the phone and hung up. There was no time for talking.

I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye.

The gas station had a big plate-glass window. It exploded inward from a Tommy-gun burst. I managed to drag the old guy down with me when I hit the floor. Otherwise, he would have been shot to pieces,

I shoved the old guy under the counter. "Stay down!" I screamed at him as I rolled towards the garage. I'd noticed a back door behind the service pit.

Two guys in blue and red smashed through the front door while their buddy with the Tommy gun kept firing short bursts of supressive fire into the front office. I shot the first guy in the face. The second tried to dodge off to the side and took two slugs to the chest.

Then I finished rolling into the garage and lunged for the back door.

* * *

I led the Inner Circle soldiers on a merry chase for about a half-hour. What the cops were doing while a running gun-battle took place all up and down that highway, I can't tell you. But they didn't bother to show up. I figure the Inner Circle must have long-since paid them off.

But they finally cornered me about a mile away from the gas station. I'd dodged down an alleyway that turned out to be dead end. I'd long since had to trade in the .44 revolver for a panty-waist .38 revolver - the second guy I managed to scavenge a weapon from didn't have the good taste of the guy back in the factory. And unfortunately, his carbine - a much better weapon - had been smashed by one of my .44 rounds.

I'd killed enough of the Inner Circle troopers to know that they weren't going to be in a forgiving mood. Flipping open the cylinder of the .38, I confirmed that I only had a single round left.

There was a throbbing ache in my right thigh where I'd been creased hard by a rifle slug. It wouldn't stop bleeding. The knife wound running down the left side of my torso was also bleeding merrily. My left elbow still hurt from when I'd dislocated and reset it. And I had easily a dozen cuts - big and small - from back when the plate glass window of the gas station was shot to pieces. Ignoring all of that as best I could, I aimed my gun at the mouth of the alley. There wasn't much light and the Inner Circle shooters couldn't see me, but they would be backlit by streetlights when they entered.

The first man did a short dash to cover behind a dumpster. A second guy tried to follow and I shot him. He went down with a yell. Shooting the second or third guy in a rush is always more effective - it causes more confusion. Then I immediately fell back deeper into the alley just before a half-dozen weapons opened up roughly in my general direction.

By the time I finished backing up, my back was literally up against a wall. I had broken bottle in one hand and a snarl on my face. And the only thing going through my head was a prayer the Marie was with Logan. He'd protect her. He'd...

And then the shooting from the mouth of the alley turned into shouting and screaming.

There was a loud crack and a flare of lightning, and silence descended. And then Logan walked into the alley.

"Jesus Fucking Christ, Logan! It took you long enough!" I yelled at him.

Looking right at me - he doesn't need as much light as most folks - Logan said dryly, "Bringing a busted bottle to a gun fight? That's not like you, Dom. You're usually smarter than that."

"Screw you and the snikt you rode in on!" I snarled as I dropped the bottle. It hit the alley floor and smashed to pieces.

Logan just chuckled as two more members of his crew entered the alley behind him: Warren and Ororo. That made sense, of course. On the surprising side, they were holding hands. I swear, there's just no telling with people.

Marie followed them. She looked anxious as all hell. And she was wearing the outfit she used to wear when she was a part of Logan's gang.

"Dom?" she called desperately. Unlike Logan, she couldn't see me.

"I'm fine," I said to her just before I collapsed.

* * *

We were holed up in a fair-to-lousy hotel. I was lying on a bed whose light-yellow coverlet was steadily acquiring dark-red smears. I was sipping some really crappy whiskey from a cracked water tumbler. Meanwhile, Marie and Mystique dressed my wounds as Logan and Hank asked me questions. Ororo and Warren were outside - and probably a couple of hundred feet straight up - keeping an eye out.

"So who the hell is this 'Inner Circle' outfit?" Logan demanded.

"Damned if I know," I replied impatiently. "But they want Xavier and Grey for some reason. And they've got 'em."

Logan and Hank looked at one another. Then Logan shrugged.

"None of our business," he growled. Great. Mr. "what's it to me?" was about to walk away from this mess just as it was finally breaking open.

"You're probably right," I said with a nod of my head. "It's not really any of your business."

Logan looked at me suspiciously. "I'm glad you agree," he said eventually.

I took a long slug from my glass. It burned down my throat like a rivulet of fire. "They probably have both of them chained up, just like they had me," I added.

Logan didn't say anything as he looked right at me. Next to him, Hank rolled his eyes upwards, but didn't say or do anything to stop me.

"They took my clothes and cuffed me hand and foot. And they had a chain around my neck. The other end of the chain was secured to the floor," I continued.

Nobody said anything, but now Mystique's hands were shaking so bad that she dropped the first-aid kit. Then she gave me a long look and picked it up off the floor. Logan was still staring, but it wasn't exactly at me. He was staring beyond me. Staring into a past that I didn't really want to imagine. I...

I didn't like what I was doing to them. In fact, I felt more than a little ashamed. But it had to be done.

"It was like I was some kind of animal," I continued softly. "And that's probably what's happening to Xavier and Grey."

Logan and Mystique looked at one another. I didn't even try to guess what kind of silent communication they exchanged.

Hank didn't bother to ask Logan what to do next. He just got to his feet and reached for the phone.

"I'll get everyone together," he said quietly.

Still not saying a word. Still staring back at some hell that would never quite go away. Logan nodded.

* * *

They sent me home. And Marie insisted on moving me into her place. Believe me, I didn't fight the idea.

Back in her apartment, Marie promptly began fussing over me; fluffing pillows, straightening blankets, and fetching things. And all the while she was going on and on in her worried southern accent, asking me if I needed anything. Anything at all.

I thought about that and grinned as I made a request. With my hand to God, I swear I actually made her blush.

"Maybe when you're feeling better," she said eventually.

"Okay. But don't forget the whipped cream," I chuckled.

She smiled at me. And everything was suddenly right in my world.

Eventually, Marie and I would need to have a conversation that would sort of boil down to, "Honey, I think you should know this: Emma stripped me naked, chained me to the floor, and then did terribly degrading sexual things to me - it was great!" It wasn't too hard to figure what would happen next. Marie would get mad and call me a slut while I protested that I hadn't had any choice. Then she'd ask if I loved her, and I would swear that I did. Then she would stop talking to me and I'd have to spend a few nights in my own apartment. And then she'd forgive me and we'd have incredibly hot, sweaty, make-up sex for a solid week - over and over again. Sex in the bed, in the bath, on the floor, on the fire-escape, in my car, in the office (screw the rules), and probably in a few random alleyways, doorways, and rooftops.

I could hardly wait. Damn, it was good to be alive.

Then Hank knocked on the door and walked into Marie's apartment.

"Hi, Rogue," he said to Marie. She grinned and kissed him on the cheek.

"Hey! Quit making time with my girl!" I yelled at him. "And what the hell do you want?"

He looked at me skeptically. "Huh. Since you're feeling so fiesty, then you won't mind taking care of something for us," he said.

I gave him the evil eye. He ignored it. It's just about impossible to intimidate Hank.

"We took care of your Inner Circle problem," Hank said gruffly. Just a reminder that I had, after all, put myself in Logan's debt.

So I settled back into my bed. Marie's bed. Our bed. And I asked, "What do you want, Hank? I'm not going to be doing any running, jumping, and shooting for a while. And how did it go with Xavier and Grey? Are they okay?"

"We got them," Hank said. "And they're fine. In fact, it turns out Grey is quite the cutie. Right now, she's hanging around with us. On the other hand, Xavier is still a stuck-up pain-in-the-ass. We're putting up with him for now."

"Any idea what the hell the Inner Circle was doing?"

Hank shrugged, "They had some kooky idea that psychics can summon a powerful thing that kicks professional-league psychic ass. They call it the 'Phoenix'."

I saw no reason to mention that I'd heard that word before, so I sighed and said, "That sounds suspiciously like some sort of religious nut-job bullshit."

Hank nodded, "Looks like it."

I noticed that he hadn't exactly agreed 100% with what I'd said.

"So what does Logan want from me?" I asked.

Hank smiled savagely, "Most of the Inner Circle decided to fight us. I got to admit, it was a tougher than I thought it would be. But we won in the end."

No surprise there. I continued looking at Hank.

"But we did get one prisoner," he continued. "And Logan wants you to talk to her."

"Who's the prisoner?" I asked as neutrally as possible. Actually, I had a pretty good suspicion who it was.

"The lady who set you up. Emma Frost."

I made a point of not looking in Marie's direction, "And what makes Logan think I want to talk to her?"

Hank's eyes were bottomless pools of darkness as he grinned and said, "The lady says she wants to talk to you. And for some reason, Logan is going along with that. And besides, she's really your problem. So Logan figures that you get to choose if she lives or dies."

* * *

They were holding Emma in a warehouse just off the docks. I'd heard of the place before, but I've never been there. That's good, because people who go there have a habit of never being seen again. In fact, I wasn't too thrilled about making this little visit, but I didn't have a lot of choice. Hank escorted me in, past some of Logan's bruisers - a pair of cold-eyed youngsters named Sam and Dani.

Christ, Logan is recruiting 'em young!

Emma was sitting in a rusty iron chair, behind a tiny wooden table. She was barefoot and dressed in a knee-length, threadbare, summer dress. An intricate-looking steel collar surrounded her neck. To say the least, she wasn't up to her usual standards of dress.

I gave Hank a quizzical look.

"The collar controls her psychic abilities," he said without me having to ask.

"Where'd you get a gizmo like that from?"

Hank shrugged, "We've got a guy working for us who can put together some amazing stuff."

I nodded and sat down across the table from Emma. Her eyes cooly met mine. Emma is the kind of woman you can beat, but not really defeat. I suppose I'll always admire that in her. However, in this case the "beaten" part was pretty literal. There were bruises on her face, and she had a black eye and a split lip. And some of that was obviously fresh - like within the last few hours.

Kitty was leaning against the far wall, watching us both. She had her typically amused and more-than-slightly-crazy look on her face. A glance at her knuckles told me that she was the one who'd been beating Emma. Kitty noticed that and smiled at me as she licked the biggest cut on her right hand. I wish to hell Logan would do something about her - she's a psycho who was only barely in control. And if he didn't do something, it will end badly for her, and for anyone else caught in her blast radius.

"Emma..." I began, then paused.

"Hello, Dom," she said calmly.

"I was told you wanted to see me," I said quietly.

She nodded.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I'd like to live," she said simply.

I nodded, "Yeah. I can understand that. You know, I might not have the last word on that. Hell, I'm not really sure if I have anything to say about it at all."

Emma looked up at Hank, who was standing right behind me.

Hank put a huge hand on my shoulder, "Logan says it's up to you."

Thanks, Logan, I fumed to myself. Just freaking thanks. You know, I shoot people all the time - but that's in a fight. It's what I do and I'm more than used to that. But I've never had to look someone cold in the eye and make this kind of decision before. I barely stopped myself from cursing out loud.

"You lied to me and used me, Emma," I said more than a little coldly. "Why shouldn't I let Logan's people settle things with you?"

She didn't even hesitate, "Because I protected both you and Marie. The rest of the Inner Circle wanted to kill you and I wouldn't let them - I said you were too valuable. And I never told them about Marie. That's why she stayed free after you were captured."

"Okay," I said slowly. "I'll ignore the obvious fact that you 'protected' us from the organization of nutcases that you involved us with in the first place. And I'll just ask... why? Why did you suddenly start giving a damn about our safety"

She sighed, "I never wanted either of you to be hurt. I never wanted anyone hurt. Unfortunately, I was working with the type of people who enjoy exercising that sort of power. So I had to play a two-faced game to keep you and Marie safe while doing what had to be done. After you found Xavier and Grey, my plan was that you would work for me until I could reasonably let you go, while Marie remained completely out of the picture."

"If you didn't have that high of an opinion about the rest of the Inner Circle, why were you working with them?"

Something angry flared in Emma's eyes, "Because whatever else they might have been, they were right about the Phoenix! It's real and it's incredibly dangerous and it has its hooks into the Grey woman! That's why I did so many things that you think are questionable! They were fucking questionable! But they were also necessary!"

That sudden burst of energy caught Kitty's interest. She was standing behind Emma now, and she smiled as she put her hands on Emma's shoulders and delicately ran her thumbs along the muscles of Emma's neck.

Emma took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Behind me, Hank stirred uneasily.

"Someday you will all need me, Dom," Emma said in a calmer voice. "I'm the only person left alive who's studied the Phoenix and knows what it is and what it can do. If you let them kill me, than I'll merely be the first of many to die!"

"Hush, sweetie," Kitty said with easy authority, brushing her fingertips across Emma's cheek. "Don't get all excited and angry, or else I'll have to punish you again. You remember last time don't you? Wasn't it fun?"

"Get you hands off of her," I ordered Kitty. My voice was so hard I almost didn't recognize it.

Kitty looked at me and smiled, but she didn't back off.

"Kitty, get out of here," Hank said from behind me. If anything, he sounded even colder than I had.

Kitty looked past me at Hank. And for a brief second I thought she was going to tell him to go to hell. And there I was, stuck in between them. But then Kitty smiled brightly at all of us and let go of Emma. Then she turned on her heel and walked out the door.

"Well?" Hank rumbled at me.

I stood up.

"Let her go," I said to Hank.

He nodded as Emma let out a deep sigh of relief. Taking Emma by the hand, I led her towards the door. Sam and Dani stood away as Sam opened the door wide.

"You better not be lying to me, Emma," I told her.

"I wish I was," she answered softly.

Together, we walked out of the dim shadow of the warehouse and into a sunlit morning.


	2. The Case of the Undying Mind Master

THE CASE OF THE UNDYING MIND MASTER

"I thought you two had a rule about this sort of thing."

It's scary how quiet Logan can be when he tries. And, yeah, Marie and I do have a "no hanky-panky in the office" rule, but we were closed for the night and one thing had led to another...

"Eeep!" Marie yelped as she jumped out of my lap. Blushing furiously, she turned to face the wall as she hurriedly buttoned her dress. I refused to do anything with my blouse. For one thing, there wasn't any part of me that Logan hadn't seen, very up-close and very personal, at one time or another. And I would be damned if I'd let him to see me in a girly panic.

"Dammit, Logan!" I snarled at him.

"Ladies, I'm really sorry to interrupt," Logan said with vast and obvious insincerity.

"Business hours are over," I said as evenly as I could manage. "There's a sign on the door. I'm fairly sure you know how to read."

Logan tossed a money-clip on my desk. It was thickish and the outermost bill was a twenty. "I want to do some business, Dom" he said, "but if you aren't available..."

He let that hang as I forced myself not to stare at the money-clip. I'm a private-eye, but there isn't a lot of call in this town for a PI who doesn't take dirty cases. And at the moment, Domino Investigations was running in the red.

Trying to ignore the fact that my blouse was open and my pants were unbuckled - at least Logan couldn't see that last part since I was sitting behind my desk - I nodded at him and said, "Okay, we just opened for business. Now, what the hell do you want?"

Marie put a cup of coffee on the desk in front of Logan. Then she cuffed him in the back of the head and walked away, her back stiff and indignant. He smiled over his shoulder at her. The history there is long and messy, but the bottom line was that Logan would probably die for Marie. He would certainly kill for her. That was something we had in common.

Then Logan turned his attention back to me and said, "Erik is up to something. Find out what the hell it is."

Logan runs the biggest gang in this town. Erik Lehnsherr runs the second biggest gang. They step carefully around each other, but the smart money was that someday Logan and Erik would go to war. I wasn't looking forward to that day. Nobody was.

With a snort, I picked up Logan's money-clip - it was simple and worn and decorated with the crest of a Canadian infantry regiment that died at the Somme - and tossed it back.

"I don't do that kind of gang-work," I growled at him. "Have your own people sort it out."

"Emma's involved," he said.

That made me hesitate. Emma Frost is a very beautiful and very dangerous piece of work. She once used me and betrayed me, but I was willing to say she thought it was for a good cause. Hey, I can't say I haven't done worse a few times in my life. And in her own slightly crazy way, Emma tried to protect Marie and I when we needed it. I didn't exactly owe her, but...

Logan tossed the money-clip back at me. I caught it in midair.

"What are the details?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Erik and Emma have been seen together. And Erik's been moving men and money around in ways that don't make good business sense - it's like he's looking for something. Some of my people think I'm imagining things, but I'm willing to take a shot in the dark. That's where you come in."

"Why me?" I asked warily. Like I said, Logan has his own people - a gang of men and women with strange powers of the mind and body. And they're pretty damn good at what they do.

A wry smile flickered across Logan's face and then vanished, "If one of my guys is caught snooping around Erik's business, it could start trouble. But if a private eye with a known connection to Emma just happens to look her up... well, that's what the guys in striped pants like to call 'a deniable contact'. All very quiet and civilized and maybe some information changes hands that helps keep things from going crazy."

I couldn't help it - I snickered. That kind of delicacy was more than a little surprising coming from Logan.

"You oughta go to work for the State Department."

Logan's smile turn hard, "Too much lying and pretending."

I nodded slowly, "Okay. I'll go have a talk with Emma, but you're spending a lot of money for what might be not much work on my part."

"Let me worry about that."

I tucked the money-clip into my desk drawer.

* * *

Logan was gone, my shirt and pants were rebuttoned, and Marie was mad at me.

"You should have told him to go to hell," Marie said as she hammered at her battered typewriter. Whenever we get a little money I try to convince her to buy a new one, but she always refuses.

"We need the money," I said reasonably.

She sighed, "I know. I'm the one who lies to the bill collectors, remember? But a case involving Erik and Emma? That can't be anything good."

"And maybe that's why somebody should check on it," I replied.

She stopped what she was doing and turned around in her chair to look at me, "Dom, this whole thing sounds bad."

I sighed and then said, "I'll see Emma and have a few words with her. With any luck, that's all it will take."

Marie gave me a skeptical look. Even I didn't believe what I'd just said.

* * *

Emma was born and raised in this city, but after the Inner Circle was violently dismantled and she almost got killed in the process, I really thought Emma would get the heck out of town and never look back. But Emma just about always does the unexpected. Instead of leaving town, she raised her profile even higher. It was hard to read a paper nowadays - especially the society pages - and not catch a reference to the goings-on of the beautiful heiress to the Frost family fortune.

At the moment, Emma was living in a posh apartment in one the city's newer high-rises. There was a doorman in the lobby, but like most employees of the super-rich he was underpaid. The fiver I slipped him bought me both an unannounced entrance and the information that Emma was home.

As I knocked on the door to Emma's penthouse apartment, I wondered what it cost to live in a place like that. A month's rent was probably more than what I made in a year. That sort of thing always made me think. You can be a private-eye with scruples, but it doesn't pay much. If it was just me, I wouldn't care, but there's also Marie to consider. I wanted her to have something better in life than three dollar dresses, second-hand shoes, and an apartment the size of a large closet.

After a few moments, the door opened - and the surprises began.

"Hello?" Jean Grey said, one eyebrow raised enquiringly as she looked at me. She was wearing a very short robe made of white silk. Her legs and feet were bare and I was fairly sure she wasn't wearing much of anything underneath her robe. Her long red hair was mussed and her lipstick could have used some touch-up.

A while back, I caught a glimpse of Jean through a window. Then mortar shells started falling and that pretty much screwed up any chance we might have had for polite introductions.

"We've never met," I said slowly, caught completely off-guard. "But my name is Domino..."

The "who the hell are you?" look on her face cleared away and she smiled. My body temperature seemed to rise a half-dozen degrees in response. This girl was dynamite.

"Why, hello! It's nice to finally meet you!" Jean said eagerly as she opened the door wide and stepped out of the way. For the first time, I could see into the apartment. The decor had an art-deco motif, which had become pretty popular lately.

"Emma!" Jean called. "There's someone to see you!"

Emma Frost stepped into the living room. She wasn't wearing much more than Jean, and had the same tousled "I've been fucking like a bunny"-look about her.

"Hi, Emma," I said with a nod of my head.

Stepping close to me, Emma kissed me on the cheek. Then she looked at Jean.

"Jean, this is Domino. I've mentioned her to you."

Still smiling, Jean replied, "Yes, you have. So, what's it like to be a private eye?"

The last part was addressed to me. I couldn't help but grin. There was something about Jean that made you smile - an enthusiasm for life. Marie's like that, too.

"Never a dull moment," I said. "Lots of intrigue, excitement, handsome men, and pretty girls. And the money's great."

"That means monotony, divorce cases, hunting down missing persons who usually want to be missing, and otherwise dealing with grimy little people and their grimy little problems. And the money is terrible," Emma translated for me - fairly accurately I might add.

Jean laughed, "Don't mess with my romantic illusions, Emma. Tell you what, I was going to go do some studying. I'll get dressed and get out of here and you two can have the place to yourselves."

Jean vanished into the back as Emma picked up a tumbler and a crystal decanter and asked, "Scotch? On the rocks?"

I nodded.

"Sit down, Dom," Emma said distractedly as she poured. "And relax. You look uncomfortable as all hell."

Jean was a quick dresser. I was sitting on the couch and taking a first appreciative sip of Emma's extremely fine Scotch when she reappeared, dressed in a serious-looking black and green jacket-skirt combination. It went well with her now neatly brushed red hair. She was carrying an oversized handbag stuffed with so many books that it would probably break bones if she hit someone with it.

"Have fun," she called out. Then she gave Emma a quick kiss and walked out the door.

Emma curled up in the easy chair opposite me. She had her own glass of scotch and her minimal robe was riding up on her thighs to a very distracting level. Knowing Emma, that probably wasn't an accident. She likes people to be off-balance around her, and she doesn't hesitate to use her looks to get that effect.

"Yes, Jean and I are sleeping together," she said calmly, after taking a sip of scotch. "Yes, she's very good in bed. No, I've never chained her naked to a cold concrete floor and used her like a cheap whore. Yes, I seduced her so I could keep an eye on her. And, yes, despite my original motives I have come to... enjoy her company."

I gave Emma a dirty look.

"I didn't use telepathy," she said with a shrug. "I just knew what you were thinking and felt it would be best to get the obvious questions out of the way."

Typical Emma. Always with the games.

"I'm here on a job," I said.

Her eyes narrowed and she studied me over the rim of her glass.

"Logan wants me to ask you a few questions," I continued.

She was suddenly very still. Emma was once in Logan's hands. It hadn't been a pleasant experience for her. Of course, she did deserve almost every minute of it.

"And just what does Logan want to know?" she asked.

"What's up with Erik Lehnsherr? And how are you involved?"

She thought that over for a second and then said, "Not even an attempt at subtlety?"

"No," I said flatly. "And it would be a good thing if you gave me some information to take back to Logan."

"And why should I?" she challenged.

"Because I'm the soft approach, Emma," I said quietly and very truthfully. "Don't kid yourself - in the long run, this is Logan's town. He's been acting fairly civilized lately, but you once caught a glimpse of what he and his people can be like when they're unhappy. Blow me off and Logan might let it slide - or he might decide to try again. And the next time he comes asking questions it'll be a lot less polite."

"Don't try to frighten me, Domino."

I slammed my glass down on a glass-surfaced coffee table so hard that I was surprised it didn't crack. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how worried I was about Emma's immediate future.

"I'm not threatening you, Emma. I'm begging you. Logan smells blood. For God's sake, you know what that means better than most people!"

She stared at me.

"Look in my head," I ordered softly as I leaned towards her.

Emma put down her drink. Her fingertips - cold and wet from her glass - brushed my forehead. And she flinched at what she saw.

Picking up the glass of Scotch again, she finished it in one swallow. "Mr. Lehnsherr hired my services. I thought it would be politic to do as he asked - with the understanding that he owed me a favor."

I nodded, "Good call. The trick is to do some work for guys like Logan or Erik while keeping your distance and making sure that there are boundaries they understand you won't cross. And you should let everyone know that your relationship is strictly professional and that you're not a part of anyone's organization."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"So what did Erik want you to do?"

She smiled at me, "Come now, Dom. It really wouldn't be a good idea to betray Mr. Lehnsherr's confidence. But perhaps I can give you something to work with. Something he doesn't know that I know."

I waited.

"The Egyptian," Emma continued bleakly. "Whatever Erik is doing has something to do with the Egyptian."

Oh, crap. The stories told about the Egyptian are pretty ugly. He hurts people, and it's not just about business. He seems to like that sort of thing. Some say he needs it.

Dammit.

The fact that Erik was dealing with the Egyptian was news in and of itself. The fact that it wasn't being talked about out on the street was also pretty interesting. It meant that both Erik and the Egyptian were trying to keep it quiet. And they were succeeding.

I finished my drink and got to my feet. Emma rose as well.

"Leaving?" she asked.

"Thanks to you, I've now got a lot to think about."

She walked me to the door and held it open for me.

"One more thing..." Emma said.

Standing in the doorway, I paused and turned to look at her.

She took me in by the shoulders and kissed me. I didn't pull away. As a matter of fact, I took a firm grip on her hips and leaned into her. And so we stood together in the doorway, wrapped up in each other, for a long time.

"You go back home to the girl you love," she finally whispered to me. "And I'll stay here with mine. And we'll both try not to wonder how things might have been."

I left with a dozen half-connected thoughts whirling through my head. A visit with Emma can be unsettling even in the best of times, but this was more extreme than usual. I was seriously considering going back to Logan, telling him what I'd learned, and leaving it at that.

But...

But now I was curious. Scared, but curious.

* * *

"What do you know about the Egyptian?" I said into the phone. I was making the call from a phone-booth rather than from my office. I didn't want Marie to know that the Egyptian was involved quite yet.

There was a long pause on the other end, then Hank growled, "I don't like the sound of that."

Hank is Logan's number two guy. He's a big, tough-looking bruiser with freakishly big hands and feet. And he's a hell of a lot smarter than he looks. In fact, he's one of the smartest guys I've ever met. Logan sets policy for his gang, but Hank's the guy who figures out how it gets done. They make a pretty good team.

"I don't like it either," I said, "but I need whatever you got."

"Well... where do you want me to start?"

"Assume I don't know anything."

"Great," he growled again. Then he continued. "The Egyptian wandered into town about five years ago. Nobody knows why he came here. We have a source who says his real name is Amahl Farouk and he used to be a big deal in Cairo. Right now he runs a small, independent gang in the Arab neighborhood. I'm told that people in that part of town call him the Shadow King."

"What do they think of him?" I interrupted.

"They're scared silly of the guy. Anyway, he's one nasty son-of-a-bitch and both Logan and Lehnsherr want him to go away. By my count, the Egyptian's been iced at least four times since he got here. Twice by our people, once by Lehnsherr's, and one more time by a freelancer with a personal grudge. The problem is, killing him doesn't really finish him off. He just comes back - in someone else's body."

"Dammit, I was hoping that last part was just a story," I said. I'd heard stories about how hard it was to kill the Egyptian. And I don't like dealing with people that I can't get rid of by shooting them.

"You and me both. But the bottom line is that you can kill him, but he's a bitch to keep dead. The first time we got him, Kitty and Bobby caught him in an ambush. They swore they killed him, but the next day another guy is walking the streets and running the Egyptian's business as if nothing had happened. The second time we got him, Scott and Warren and Bobby sealed his body in a block of concrete and dropped it into the bay - and he was back in business within a week. The freelancer who got him is an ex-Marine named Castle. And Castle is a complete nut-job who uses the maximum possible force to solve problems. He apparently put most of a Tommy-gun magazine into the Egyptian and then torched the body, but even that didn't finish Farouk off. He just reappeared a few days later in a new skin-suit. Nobody has a clue how he does it."

"So that's why you guys tolerate him?" I asked.

"We don't have any choice. The constant brawling with his gang got expensive and we weren't getting anywhere, so we eventually wrote him off as a problem without a good solution. As near as we can tell, the Egyptian doesn't have any goals outside of his little part of the city, so Logan warned him to keep his operations local and that was the end of it. Apparently Lehnsherr feels the same way. There's been a truce ever since."

I thought all of that over for a second before continuing, "Exactly what did the Egyptian do to get on so many hit lists?"

Now Hank sounded disgusted, "Part of it's just business - when he first got here, the Egyptian thought he was going to take over the entire town. We had to teach him otherwise. But it's more than that. He's as bad as it gets, Dom. He does the stuff that nobody else will touch. Betsy thinks he feeds on pain and suffering."

Betsy Braddock is Logan's top psychic. I didn't know the lady too well, but if both Logan and Hank had faith in her, then she was good at her job.

"Just what can he do?" I asked.

"You mean besides the fact that he's ridiculously hard to kill?" Hank shot back. "Well, he's a psychic and he can read minds like most of them, but his big gig is that he controls people. If he concentrates on you, he can make you do just about anything. On a wider scale, he can make a lot of people really freaking loyal to him. Betsy says he's the most powerful 'possessor' - that's what she calls him - that she's ever seen. But he does seem to have some limits in how many people he can control or influence at a time. Otherwise, he probably actually would have taken over this town."

I sighed, "This really doesn't sound good. Anything else?"

Hank didn't say anything.

"Hank?" I said into the phone. "I'm working for you guys, remember?"

Then he sighed, "Okay, there's one more thing. He and Ororo have some history."

I blinked in surprise, "What kind of history?"

"She was the "source" I mentioned a while back that gave us the background info on the Egyptian. She worked for him when she was a kid back in Africa. Oh, hell, why play with words? Ororo was one of the people he controlled - one of his slaves."

"What does she have to say about that?" I asked slowly.

"She tries to hide it, but she's terrified of the bastard. Warren says she almost completely flipped out when she found out the Egyptian was in town. She wanted to run all the way to Europe, but he managed to talk her out of it. Can you imagine what it would take to make Ororo that scared of someone? Look, Dom, if you can figure out a way to permanently deep-six this bastard, there's a big piece of change in it for you. And my personal thanks."

I thought about that, "I may need to talk to Ororo."

"No."

"Hank..."

"No."

Logan's people are crazy-loyal to one another. Sometimes too loyal.

I took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, "Okay."

* * *

I made a few more phone-calls, talking to informers, reporters, cops, and other sources. I didn't get much. Nobody likes to talk about Erik or the Egyptian - or Logan for that matter. It's not good for your health.

Which left me with my one sort-of dependable source of information about Erik - Pietro and his gang. But there was a decent chance that Pietro and his boys might actually be working for Erik at the moment, so I had to be careful.

Lucky for me, there was one guy in Pietro's gang who would always be willing to give me the time of day. He wasn't answering his phone, so I went to 'Big Willies' - a popular downtown hotdog stand. A quarter bought me a cup of coffee and a Polish dog with sauerkraut, onions, and mustard.

Fred Dukes walked in a half-hour later. Some people call him the Blob, but not to his face. He's as big as a house and not very bright. It's funny how smart people - like Pietro and Erik, for example - sometimes say things around not-smart people that they shouldn't.

"Dom!" Fred yelled when he saw me, giving me a gap-toothed grin.

I waved to the guy behind the counter, "Give Fred here five of your footlongs. Same fixings as mine."

Back during my brief stint as a part of Pietro's crew, Fred was the guy who showed me 'Big Willies'. And he introduced me to his favorite style of hotdog at the same time.

With a laugh like a cannon, Fred parked his very big butt on a heavy wood and iron bench that existed for no other reason than to support the load that was him. Fred brought it in himself the day after he demolished his third chair.

"Good to see you, darlin'" he said with a grin. "But you only look me up when you want something. So what's going on?"

I couldn't help but feel bad. Fred had pretty much nailed it - I do like Fred in a funny kind of way, but he's not the kind of guy you voluntarily spend a lot of time with.

"You got me, Fred. Yeah, I do have a few questions."

"Ah, don't feel bad, sweetie. It's good to see you no matter what. So what do you want to know?"

"Pietro's dad is up to something. Any idea what it is?"

A cute, young waitress dropped the first two of Fred's dogs off at our table, "The rest are on the way, Freddie!"

Fred patted her ass and said, "Thanks, doll." She giggled and walked away. Weird.

Then Fred popped most of a hotdog into his mouth and began noisily chewing it to pieces.

"Well..." he mumbled thoughtfully through a mouthful, "Pietro and his dad had one of their father-son talks the other day. You know, the ones where Dad says, 'Do this or I will destroy you!' and Pietro says, 'Wah! You don't love me!' - that sort of talk?"

I managed to keep a straight face as I nodded.

Fred swallowed, belched, and continued, "Pietro's dad has him looking for somebody. A kid, I think. Pietro called off a bank job we'd been planning and took off on his own to do what Daddy wanted. Mortimer told me that Pietro was asking questions about runaway kids."

That made me lean forward. "Got a name or a description of whoever he's looking for?" I asked.

Fred shrugged, "Nah. Sorry, toots, that's all I know. Does that help?"

I stood up and kissed Fred on the cheek. He actually blushed.

* * *

After that, I bought a drink for a nervous social-worker in a basement speakeasy. He told me that some very scary people were quietly spreading money and threats through the city's child-welfare system. It was the classic carrot-and-stick: give us what we want and we'll reward you, hold out on us and you'll get hurt.

"What do they want?" I asked.

"Records on all the kids who've passed through the system in the last month. And notification about anyone new that got either picked up or sighted," he said as he morosely shook the ice-cubes in his now empty glass. I signaled the bartender to get him another one.

"It sounds like they're looking for someone." I said cautiously.

"If they are, they aren't giving out names or descriptions. They just want access to the files and reports."

I left the speakeasy and got in touch with a police sergeant who owed me a favor. He had a similar story. The word was out in every precinct that there were people with deep pockets who wanted to know about any loose kids that were running around on the streets. And again, there were no descriptions or names. They just wanted the raw information.

* * *

That night, at Marie's apartment, I told her everything.

"The Egyptian..." she said slowly. She was obviously worried to hear that he was involved.

"Yeah," I replied. I considered not telling her about that part, but if I kept secrets and she found out later... well, there was no telling what she'd do to me, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

"You see the connection?" she asked.

"The Egyptian sells kids," I said quietly.

Give Logan and Erik credit, they didn't have anything to do with that kind of thing. But there will always be a market for really young flesh. And that means somebody will try and make a buck off of it. It was the kind of thing - ugly and evil - that seemed tailor-made for the Egyptian.

"But this isn't about the Egyptian looking for kids that nobody will miss..." Marie pondered.

"No. This is still about Erik. As near as I can tell, Erik went to the Egyptian because the Egyptian is a good source of information on street kids. And Erik's doing the same thing with the cops and the bureaucracy. For some reason, Erik's looking for a kid or a set of kids. And he's pulling just about every string he can find. Except for one."

"Logan," Marie said immediately.

I nodded, "Yeah. Erik doesn't want Logan to know what he was doing."

"Why?" Marie asked.

"That's a damned good question."

"There's something else..." Marie began - and then stopped.

"What?"

"Erik's put a lot of time and effort into finding whoever he's looking for, but he hasn't found them. And he'd only go to the Egyptian if he was getting desperate."

I nodded, this has already occurred to me, "Which implies that whoever Erik is looking for is pretty good - unnaturally good, as a matter of fact - at keeping out of sight."

"Someone like us," Marie concluded. She was referring to people who have abilities beyond those of normal folk.

I nodded in agreement.

Later that evening, we lay in bed together, holding each other as the red neon lights outside of Marie's window flashed on and off. I really didn't have a clue what to do next.

And after I fell asleep, I had a nightmare where I was running down a street, frantically looking for Marie. All I could find was boys and girls who kept offering to sell me their bodies. One of them was very young Ororo.

* * *

Sleeping on a problem often helps - even if you don't get much sleep. The next morning, as Marie and I shared a breakfast of bacon and eggs, an idea popped into my head. There were some risks, and at least one wild leap of faith, but it might work. And I didn't have much else.

At the office, I made a phone-call.

"So I finally get to hear your voice," Dr. Xavier said pleasantly. The long-distance connection was unusually good. He was currently teaching at Harvard, which was a quick train trip up the coast, but I didn't have the time to go visit. So Mr. Bell's favorite invention would have to do.

"We were kinda overdo for a conversation, Doctor Xavier..."

"Please, call me Charles," he interrupted gently.

"Thanks. Look, Charles, I'm going to get right to the point. Somewhere here in town is a kid. Some scary people - including Erik Lehnsherr and a guy named Amahl Farouk - are looking for that kid. I don't have a clue why they want him, but it seems to me that maybe somebody else better find him first. I'm hoping you can help."

"And just how can I help?" he asked warily.

"I've got reason to believe that the kid is one of us - a person with special talents. And I'm taking a guess that you have a way of finding people like that. And it's no guess at all that you make a habit of helping people like us who happen to need help - particularly youngsters."

There was a long pause before he spoke again, "You seem to know a great deal about my affairs, Miss Thurman."

I blinked in surprise. Nobody calls me that. Hell, not that many people even know my real name.

"No offense, Charles, but after that business with Jean Grey and the Inner Circle, I got curious about you. So I did some checking - and connected a few dots. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

"You are not wrong, Miss Thurman. But I would not like it to become common knowledge that I have developed a means of tracking mutants across considerable distances."

Mutants. I'd never heard that word before. I filed it away for reference.

"I understand," I said.

"Do you have anything I can work with besides the fact that we are looking for a mutant child in your city?" he continued. "Your hometown has an unusually large mutant population. I'm afraid that will make such a task difficult."

"Well... a common assumption seems to be that the kid is living on the streets. That probably means that he doesn't hang around with a lot of other people, and has found somewhere to hide. And he probably doesn't stick out too much in a crowd or he would have been picked up by now. And actually, I'm not really sure that we're talking about a loner - there might be more than one kid. For that matter, I'm not really sure that the kid is a "he". Sorry. I know that's not much, but it's all I've got."

He sighed, "I'll try my best."

"That's great! My phone number is..."

*That won't be necessary,* his voice spoke in my head.

I hate psychics.

*No, you don't,* he chuckled.

* * *

He was back inside an hour.

*I may have something for you.*

Even though I was expecting him to 'call', I still jumped. I'll never get used to all of this psychic stuff.

"That's good," I replied out loud as I reached for a paper and pencil. I was sitting in my office. Marie had stopped in the middle of what she had been doing and was looking at me. She was only hearing one side of the conversation.

*I have detected two young female mutants, probably adolescents, who are in the Piedmont area of your town. They seem to taking shelter in an abandoned home. I cannot determine the address, but from the mental images I managed to secure, the building is made of stone, two stories in size, has a gray slate roof, and was probably built in the middle part of the last century. It overlooks a small river. I suggest you hurry up, since I cannot guarantee that those girls will remain for very long in that area.*

"Thanks, Charles!" I yelled as I ran out of my office. Behind me, Marie was standing in the center of the room, her mouth open as she watched me leave.

* * *

Piedmont is a part of town that used to be pretty prosperous. Once upon a time, it was filled with factories and mills, and hundreds of workers lived nearby. But the plants were built around the time of the Civil War - and they ran into a lot of more efficient competition after the turn of the century. The Depression finished most of them off. Now the plants were mostly abandoned and so were a lot of the houses. Someday, when property values drop enough, somebody will start something up again in Piedmont, but for right now it's damn near a wasteland.

The small river running through Piedmont used to supply water-power for the plants and mills. Upriver from the factory district was where most of the homes were located. I checked that area out first - and found the place Charles had described fairly quickly.

The neighborhood was mostly abandoned, except for a few old-folks stubbornly hanging on to their decrepit homes. It was a grim place, but for a strange moment I saw me and Marie living in one of those houses. We were old and comfortable and waiting for the end of our days with the only thing that really mattered - each other. Somehow, that didn't seem too bad. Maybe that was how it was working for the people who were still there.

I parked my Packard on the far side of the block and cut through a trash-strewn alleyway. Before I crossed the street, I took my time to examine the area. Nobody seemed to be watching, either from the house that I was sneaking up on, or in the rest of the neighborhood.

A wooden "For Sale" sign nailed over the front door of the house was peeling so bad that you could barely read it. The windows were shuttered, except for one on the second floor. Looking it over, I got the definite impression it had been opened just recently, after years of being shut.

I moved off to the side, vaulting a couple of half-collapsed fences, so I wouldn't have to approach the house directly. Then I finally crossed the street and continued on into the back-alley beyond. It made sense to approach the house from behind.

The backdoor of the house had been jimmied open, but the damage was minimal. You had to examine the door closely to see that it wasn't secured.

As quietly as I could manage, I opened the backdoor and entered what had once been a kitchen. I had my .45 in my hand and I felt funny about that. What was I going to do? Shoot a pair of scared kids? But long experience suggested to me that maybe you should be carrying a weapon in circumstances like this. So I had a round in the chamber and the hammer locked back.

Everything in the kitchen that was easily movable and salable had long since been stripped out. Rusty iron water pipes, carefully capped, protruded from the walls. Through a doorless window, I could see some of what looked like a living room. I carefully closed the back-door behind me and the only light left was coming through gaps in the boards of the window shutters.

Figuring that the stairs were in the front, I continued on into the next room. And there I found myself fighting for my life.

I caught a brief flicker of movement in what I later found out was a fragment of mirror that was still hanging on a wall. Something flew out of a dark corner of the living room and it was only by the sheerest of luck (which is admittedly a specialty of mine) that I sensed it coming.

That was enough to make me duck and dodge to the side. Which was enough to save my life.

Something raked against my thigh and pain lanced up my leg as I felt hot blood soak into my pants. Whoever was attacking me, they were right on top of me and had some kind of edged weapon. Even worse, they were moving like they could see just fine, while I has half-blind. None of that was good.

I closed my eyes, and lunged backwards and away from my attacker as I fired my .45 twice. Through my eyelids, I could see the bright muzzle flash of my weapon. Since I was firing blind, I'd only hit if I got even luckier than usual, but that wasn't the point. The point was that the flashes would momentarily blind my attacker.

Careening towards the nearest wall, I hastily elbow-smashed open a shuttered window and then continued on into a corner. I wanted light and a reduced number of angles from which I could be approached. I got them both.

With my back to the corner, I held my weapon in front of me and scanned the now dimly lit living room.

Nothing was stirring. Not even a mouse. But there were a lot of dark corners and shadows.

Keeping my eyes on the room, I ran my free hand over the wound in my leg. It wasn't as bad as I feared, but it wasn't good.

There was a clatter from a particularly dark corner off to one side, but I refused to look at it. It was an attempt to get me to look in one direction while I was attacked from another. I immediately turned my weapon towards the opposite side of the room from where the noise had come.

She came out of the darkness, moving low and fast and with terrible purpose, but immediately saw that I hadn't been fooled. I fired just as she dropped to the floor and rolled back into the darkness. I didn't miss by much, but I did miss.

I got a fairly good look at her. She was a kid - maybe ten years old - with long black hair, skin almost as pale as Marie's, and eerie green eyes. She was wearing dark pants, work-boots, and a black long-sleeved shirt. And she had bone-white claws. Two on each of her hands and another one on each foot. In the brief moment I spotted her, I could see a streak of blood on one of her foot claws. That was my blood.

When I saw the claws, a big chunk of the mystery was solved. Oh, there were still some things that had to be sorted out, but now I knew what Erik was doing. On the other hand, that might not matter. There were four rounds left in my weapon. Unless I could come up with something, that meant I had four chances to ice somebody who was really fast, really lethal, and really hard-to-kill - or she would finish me.

"I'm from Logan," I said. Hopefully that would end it.

Nothing.

"Laura, please stop," somebody said from back and above.

I could only barely see her, but at the top of the stairs there was another girl. She was also dressed in black - some sort of long and old-fashioned looking dress - and was wearing a dark veil.

"Please leave. We don't want to hurt you," she said to me in strangely accented English.

In the darker recesses of the room, I could sense that the little girl with the big claws was using the distraction to slip closer to me. I didn't think that the older girl with the veil was lying to me, but I was pretty sure that "Laura" wasn't playing by the same rules as her friend.

"Laura! Stop!" the girl in the veil repeated sharply.

The girl ghosting through the darkness froze. And then she receded a bit. She seemed... frustrated.

My mouth was dry and blood was still leaking down my leg.

"Who is Logan?" the girl in the veil asked.

I almost laughed, but then I stopped myself just in time. I was beginning to feel light-headed.

"He's Laura's father," I said. Then I took a really big chance and lowered my weapon.

* * *

When we got back to my office, Marie took one look at me and immediately got me out of my pants. And not in a good way.

So there I was, pants-less, with a bottle of cheap whisky in one hand, and surrounded by three cute girls. When you put it that way, it sounded like a positive situation. Unfortunately, the reality wasn't much fun.

My now blood-stained desk chair had been rolled into the middle of the office. I was grumpily occupying it as Marie knelt next to me and carefully stitched up the gash in my leg. I was acutely aware of the fact that I was wearing a pair of delicate pink panties. I'd never buy a pair like that, but they were a gift from Marie. Normally, I'm plain ol' white panties kind of gal, but I was a little behind on my laundry...

Claw-girl and Veil-girl - their names were Laura and Sooraya - were watching the procedure with some interest as Marie sewed my leg back together. Sooraya was sitting in the guest chair. Laura was crouched next to her, and not looking even slightly guilty about the fact she was the one who cut me. Sooraya was slowly, soothingly, running her fingers through Laura's hair. Since only females were present, Sooraya had taken her veil down. It hung down by her shoulder, only held in place by one pin.

Sooraya was a dark-haired and -eyed teenager. She wasn't Arab. If I had to make a guess, she was from somewhere in south Asia.

"Stop wiggling," Marie said irritably as she tried to tie off the last stitch.

I bit back a nasty response and took another shot from the bottle. Really, I shouldn't have been drinking with a stone-killer like Laura sitting just a few feet away. But something told me that she wasn't in a homicidal mood at the moment. Otherwise I would never would have brought her anywhere near Marie.

Marie was finished with me and it was time to get back to business. I looked at Laura and Sooraya and said, "You two have some tough choices to make. And you have to make them fast."

Sooraya raised her chin slightly, but said nothing. Laura was also silent, but something in her eyes suggested that if I said the wrong thing then she was going to try to kill me. Again.

"I don't think your father knows about you," I said to Laura. I had to get her thinking about something other than gutting me. "If he did, he would have done a lot more than just hire me to figure out what was going on. He would turned the entire town upside down to find you. For better and worse, he's that kind of guy."

Laura gave me a long, puzzled look and then said, "I don't have a father."

Marie looked up from reorganizing her sewing kit and said to Laura, "Yes, you do, sugar. Everyone does. Although maybe some of them aren't worth a hoot."

Laura glanced at Sooraya and then looked back at me and Marie and said, "Not me. I'm not real."

What the hell?

"Don't you say that, young lady," Marie said firmly - her Southern accent becoming clearer now. "Don't you ever say that. And if you say it again I'll slap you silly."

Laura, the pre-pubescent predator, looked taken aback by that. Marie does that to people.

"Look," I said urgently, "you two are right in the cross-hairs of a bad situation. Do you know who Erik Lehnsherr is?"

Sooraya's eyes narrowed, "Yes."

"He's looking for Laura. Probably because she's a way to get a handle on Logan. And he's using the cops, the government, and people like the damned Egyptian to find her. Do you know who the Egyptian is?"

From the terrified look that appeared on Sooraya's face, I'd have to say that the answer to that question was a big yes.

"I helped Sooraya escape from the Egyptian," Laura said calmly.

Huh?

I glared at Laura, "How did you manage that?"

"I killed a lot of people."

Why was I not surprised? That seemed to be Laura's chosen solution to problems. Then the full meaning of what Laura had said got through to me.

"The Egyptian had you?" I asked Sooraya, suddenly sick to my stomach.

Sooraya nodded, unable to meet my eyes. Then she looked at Laura, but Laura seemed distracted. Her head was cocked to one side as if she was listening to something off in the distance. And she then took a deep sniff - like a dog who had caught of whiff of something interesting.

"People are coming to kill us," Laura announced calmly just before she grabbed Sooraya and hauled her behind the cover of my desk.

My shoulder-holster and .45 were sitting near at hand on my desk. I lunged for my weapon as the front door of my office was kicked open. Meanwhile, somebody used the fire-escape to simultaneously crash through the office window. I didn't have any choice but to ignore what was happening behind me as I put four shots into the two gun-toting goons who were coming through the door.

Behind me, I heard a dull crack and a man began screaming. I took that as a good sign. Then a guy with a handgun tried to snap a shot at me around the edge of the door. His round went semi-wild. I responded by putting two rounds through the wall he was trying to hide behind - and into him. The building is pretty crappily constructed.

There was a meat-slicing sound, something warm and wet splattered over my back and neck, and the guy who was screaming behind me suddenly went quiet. Then Marie yelled, "Dom! Let's go!"

There were more guys in the hallway and it was only a matter of time until one of them got lucky - or got mad and tried something like a grenade or a Thompson. So I fired my last few shots through the door to make the gunsels keep their distance as I faded back to the window. Just before I lunged through the window, I had a choice between grabbing my pants or a loaded .38 that was hidden under the papers in my outbox. I chose the gun.

Laura had sliced open the guy who came through the window and blood had fountained all over the back wall of my office. Out on the fire-escape, I slipped on the blood-soaked grated platform and collapsed. And because of that, a bullet that should have hit me whizzed over my head instead. Typical. On the other hand, I could feel the stitches Marie had just finished putting into my leg tear open.

Marie grabbed me and pulled me away from the window. Sooraya was crouched near the ladder going down. Laura was on the next level down of the fire-escape. At her feet, a thug with a ripped-open neck was thrashing wildly as he tried to hold what was left of his throat together. It wasn't working very well. Another thug on the ladder below Laura decided that he wasn't being paid enough for this and risked a three-story jump to the pavement.

Down on the street below, it was a heavily-armed crowd scene. There must have been a dozen guys with enough guns to conquer a small country. One guy actually had a rifle. I tagged him and a guy with a shotgun with the .38 revolver. The .45 was empty and I now had four rounds left in the revolver. From the office, I heard a burst of suppressive fire and then the thugs rushed the door. And I could see more cars full of badguys pulling up.

The situation was not looking good.

And then everything turned to wind and dust.

* * *

We were ten blocks away from my office, holed up in a garage. I'd done the owner a favor a few years back. He didn't have a lot of money, but he paid me back with free car repairs and a spare key to his place of business - just in case I ever needed a place to hide out that was relatively close to my office.

That trick where Sooraya turns into a miniature sand-storm had probably saved our asses. I'm not sure even Laura could have cut her way out of that mess back at the office building. Using Sooraya for cover, we doubled-back into my office building via a second floor window, and then went down a small maintenance stairwell and out a little-used side exit. Then Laura silently and efficiently killed two guys who were guarding the alleyway beyond. From then on we were more-or-less home-free.

My shirt was tied around my thigh as a make-shift bandage. So I was now down to panties, a bra, and my socks. My shoes were back at my office with my trousers. The garage wasn't particularly well-heated and I was beginning to shiver.

Marie had a phone in her hand and was dialing furiously.

"Who're you calling?" I asked tiredly, even though I was fairly sure I knew the answer.

"Logan!" she snarled. "I'm gonna see that bastard Lehnsherr strung up from a lamp-post for this!"

That made me wince. Once Logan got directly involved, that would start a war. And innocent people would inevitably die in the crossfire. But I didn't have another solution.

Sooraya pulled off the black cloak-dress thing she was wearing and carefully draped it over me. There was no way I could fit into it - I was at least six inches taller than her and maybe a foot taller than Laura, but at least it would help keep me warm. Underneath her outer gown, Sooraya was dressed pretty much like any girl you might see on any American city street. Maybe she was showing a little too much leg.

And a little too much belly. She was something like four months pregnant. And, Dear God, she was maybe sixteen years old.

"Godammit, Kurt! Get me Logan or Hank on this line right fucking now!" Marie was yelling into the phone.

"Who's the father?" I asked quietly.

"I am," Laura said. She was covered from head-to-toe with sticky, half-dried blood. None of it was her own.

I gave Laura a long, hard look, "Laura, you're different than most young girls I know. But unless you're even more different than I think..."

"The Egyptian sold me as a whore," Sooraya said matter-of-factly. "I do not know who the father is. There are many possibilities."

"I'll take care of Sooraya and the baby. So I'm the father," Laura told me stubbornly. Sooraya smiled at me and gave Laura a fond look. And for a moment the darkness that seemed to hang over Sooraya was dispelled. I couldn't help but wordlessly thank Laura for that. In fact, I never so much wanted to take Death in my arms and give it a kiss on the top of its head.

"Look, just what is the story with you two?" I asked exasperatedly.

Laura answered immediately. "Lehnsherr bought me in Canada and then brought me here. I don't know why. Then I killed some people and escaped. Then I found Sooraya and saw that she was a prisoner too. So I killed some people and freed her."

I bemusedly stared at Laura, "That's pretty succinct - in a lethal kind of way."

"Out!? What do you mean they're 'out'!?" Marie fumed into the phone. "Then have Betsy get a hold of those two furballs!"

Sooraya glanced at Marie, "The people at the office were from the Egyptian. I recognized some of them."

Marie hesitated in mid-rant and looked at me. She and I had both been assuming that the people who attacked us were Erik's.

"The Egyptian doesn't have a gang that big," I slowly told Sooraya.

"He can control people with his mind," Laura said with a shrug.

I glanced in Laura's direction, "I know that, but..."

"He can control many more people than is commonly known," Sooraya added tonelessly. "He has a very large force of men. They have everyday lives, and many of them are not even aware that he owns them, but he can summon them very quickly."

I looked long and hard at Sooraya, "How do you know that?"

"The Egyptian owned me for five years," Sooraya said with what seemed like bottomlessly sad emptiness. "He kept me alive because I am an abomination like him. He feeds on misery, and he said the emotions of our kind taste sweeter than those of ordinary people. So I know a great deal about him. More than anyone else, I think."

I looked at Marie. And she looked back at me. The phone was hanging in her hand and someone was talking on the other end, but Marie wasn't paying attention.

"Erik wants Laura..." I said.

"...and the Egyptian wants Sooraya," Marie replied.

"And the Egyptian knows about Laura..." I continued.

"...but Erik doesn't know about Sooraya," Marie finished.

"Get Ororo," I said, gesturing to the phone in Marie's hand.

Marie thought about that for a second, then she smiled grimly and put the chattering phone back to her ear.

* * *

There are things you never expect to see in life. And one of them is a scared Ororo Munroe.

"I have kept my distance from Farouk," Ororo said tensely. I noticed she actually used his name. She was one of the few who did.

We were in Ororo's loft apartment. It was more modest than you might expect. As one of Logan's top enforcers, Ororo makes a pretty penny. As the girlfriend of Warren Worthington III - the richest and most unlikely gangster you'll ever meet - she could live like a queen if she wanted. But instead, Ororo lives simply, surrounded by flowers and other plants and with a skylight that gives her a clear view of the heavens. The only trace of luxury I've ever seen around her are some ridiculously expensive dresses and jewelry, which I always assumed were presents from Warren. Here in her private quarters, the only sign that she was anything more than a struggling nightclub singer was a very large and decadently opulent bed. Hey, it had to be big if it was going to accommodate Warren's wings.

"We need your help, Ororo," Marie said. Then she gestured at Laura and Sooraya, "And these kids need your help. We have to draw the Egyptian into a trap. "

"And Sooraya and I will be the bait in your trap, Marie?" Ororo said coolly. "Bait is often eaten."

"It's our best chance, Ororo," I said as reasonably as I could manage. I had to be polite to Ororo since I was wearing some of her clothes. You should be nice to people who give you pants. "The Egyptian lost both of you - and his kind always has a problem with that. And if he gets the idea that Sooraya is in contact with you, and maybe about to spill everything she knows to Logan, then I figure that he'll react the way we want."

Ororo didn't seem to be moved, but her eyes met Sooraya's. "We do not have to go through with this mad scheme," Ororo offered. "I will take you in. Logan and Warren and my other friends will protect you and your friend as they have protected me. You will be safe with us."

"Gracious lady," Sooraya replied formally, probably translating a phrase from her own language, "as long as that creature walks the Earth we will never be safe. In his mind he will always think of us as his property. We are not the only people to have been his slaves, but perhaps we are the only two to have ever escaped him. We owe something to those who were not as lucky."

There was a long, tense moment as Ororo seemed to look deep into Sooraya's eyes. Sooraya looked back, obviously tense and afraid. And then Ororo nodded her head.

"Then we will fight for those who cannot fight," Ororo said softly. Sooraya bowed and said something to Ororo in a language I don't know. It sounded both humble and thankful.

Yeah, we were supposed to be a real tough bunch. And I guess we were. But I'll always believe that Sooraya was the bravest of us all.

* * *

We spent a day setting our trap. Once we were ready, Ororo, Sooraya, Laura, Marie, and I settled into Ororo's apartment and I made a few phone-calls. I used multiple cut-outs to put the story out on the streets that Ororo Munroe had a new house-guest. A guest who was an escaped slave of Amahl Farouk.

Implied in that story was the one message a gangster can never tolerate: was the Egyptian finally beginning to slip?

It was a situation that the Egyptian would have to handle personally. If he sent men, they'd likely bounce off of Ororo - and probably trigger a full-blown war with Logan. But if the Egyptian came himself, he would be able to use his psychic abilities to control the situation.

"How long do you think until he shows up?" Ororo asked me. By then it was the late afternoon of our second day in Ororo's loft. Ororo was puttering around her indoor garden, trimming and watering in an effort to keep her mind occupied. Sooraya was helping her and also seemed glad to have something to do. Marie was trying to read a book and was doing a bad job of it. Laura was waiting near the window that faced the street, watching quietly.

I suppose I should have at least tried to prevent Laura from being a part of this, but I knew that as long as Sooraya was here, Laura wouldn't leave her side.

"No way to tell," I said with a shake of my head.

Then I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.

"Psionic probe," Ororo said conversationally, but she was shivering now.

Sooraya dropped the watering can she was holding, spilling water over the wooden floor, and covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes were wide and panicky. With all six claws out, Laura got to her feet, went to Sooraya, and put her arms around her waist. Marie tossed her book aside and stared at the apartment's door.

The door opened. I tried to draw my gun, but I couldn't move. Ororo's face was contorted as she struggled to do something, anything. Sooraya was openly sobbing, imprisoned in Laura's now unyielding arms. Marie almost managed to get to her feet, but then helplessly fell back into her chair.

Then the Egyptian walked in. He didn't really look particularly frightening. In fact, he was a young, short yet solid-looking guy with dark hair, brown eyes, and pock-marked cheeks. The white suit he was wearing was more distinctive than he was. If I'd seen him walking down the street in normal clothes, I would have assumed that he was just a working stiff from one of the Italian or Greek neighborhoods. And maybe that's who he was before the Egyptian took up residence.

The basic rule of fighting the Egyptian is that you may be able to take him if you can hit him by surprise. That's how people have managed to "kill" him before. But if you don't surprise the Egyptian - if he controlled the situation instead - then he controlled you. And that's exactly what happened to us. One by one, we got on our hands and knees and touched our foreheads to the floor. I was fighting as hard as I could to break free, but it didn't matter. We were directly under the gaze of the Egyptian.

"I will no longer tolerate this insolence," the Egyptian said. His voice was nothing like his unassuming appearance. It was very deep and something about it sounded old. Very, very, old. For some reason, a mental image entered my head of the Egyptian dressed as a Pharaoh, coldly lecturing a trembling group of errant slaves just before they were painfully taught the error of their ways.

Then he sighed tiredly, "Ororo, thanks to your association with that animal Logan, you will live. But you may be assured that I will someday settle the debt between us. As for the rest of you... it is such a terrible waste, but I have no choice but to eliminate you all."

"Yes, my Lord," we all said simultaneously.

"Ororo, stay. The rest of you, get up and follow me," he finished - almost regretfully. And Ororo remained on her hands and knees as the rest of us rose to our feet at the same time, like dancers who had been practicing the move for weeks.

Then another wave of nausea hit me as the others dropped their telepathic barriers.

Emma Frost and Betsy Braddock came out of the kitchen. Jean Grey and Charles Xavier from the bedroom - with Jean pushing the Professor's wheelchair. They had been there all along, hiding their presence behind shields of psychic force.

"Ah," the Egyptian said in disgust as he looked around.

The mistake everyone kept making was that they tried to kill the Egyptian with physical force. Maybe that was possible, but nobody had managed to make his death stick. You might say we were always bringing guns to a psychic fight. But this time we'd brought psychics to a psychic fight. A lot of really powerful psychics.

The Egyptian's hold on us slipped. I leaned forward as I strained against his control. I heard Ororo hiss and Laura growl as they did the same. Our part of the fight wasn't over. The Egyptian couldn't let us go because we'd clobber him physically and then the psychics could take their time as they worked on what was left of him. We had to make it hard for him to control us, while he was too distracted by the psychics to use us effectively.

Nobody moved as the invisible fight began. But just before it started, the Egyptian looked right into my eyes and said grudgingly, "Well played."

I honestly can't tell you what our psychics did next, but the Egyptian's hold on us suddenly collapsed. Marie slapped a hand against Laura's neck. Hissing angrily, I brought up my .45 and fired just as brutally-white lightning flared and roared through a snarling whirlwind of dust.

The Egyptian was knocked against the far wall and landed in a heap between Emma and Charles. Then he somehow managed to struggle to his knees.

And then Laura and Marie loped through the dust and wind towards the Egyptian, moving like beautiful, deadly lionesses, with fierce grins on their faces and their claws out and ready.

* * *

The Egyptian saw what was coming and tried to escape. With a long leap, he crashed through a window and onto the street below. Laura, Marie, and I followed him. As we scrambled out the window, a rain of shattered glass cascaded down from the apartment's roof as Ororo and Sooraya exited through the skylight.

I had to grab-and-fall my way to the street, but Laura and Marie were more direct. They simply landed in a crouch right on the sidewalk, side-by-side. All around us, people were screaming and running for cover as Ororo's storm lashed the sky and Sooraya swept waves of dust and debris through the street.

Then rain began falling. Thick, dark rain.

The Egyptian had hostages, of course. His kind always seem to find somebody innocent to hide behind. They were a young couple - a pair of handsome kids dressed in their Sunday best and probably out on a date. Now they stared blankly at us as the stood between us and the Egyptian. They were holding long shards of broken glass and blood was already trickling from their hands.

Fortunately, whatever Emma and the other psychics had done to snap us out of the Egyptian's control was apparently still working. I had my .45 leveled and pointed at the Egyptian's head. Laura was on my left and Marie was on my right. They were quickly, but carefully, circling around the hostages.

"Stop or they die," the Egyptian said in his old voice. The boy and the girl wordlessly put their blades of broken glass to their throats.

Marie stopped moving. And so - a bit to my surprise - did Laura.

"This battle is over," he continued coldly. "I will retire and these two will accompany me. When I am safe, I will let them go. Otherwise..."

The rain slowed and the roll and growl of thunder dimmed. I lowered my gun as Marie and Laura took a few cautious steps backwards.

I blinked hard to clear the rain from my eyes. And then a precise ripple of mud-filled rain slapped hard across the Egyptian's face. He staggered backwards and the two hostages seemed to blink in surprise.

Bless you, gracious lady, I thought.

My first shot took the Egyptian in the middle of his forehead. The second shot slammed into his right eye. As I took the Egyptian down, Marie and Laura lunged forward and tackled the hostages, bowling them over and slapping the glass daggers from their hands.

The Egyptian was now on his back and a big part of his head was missing, but incredibly enough he was still moving. Running up to him, I put another shot into his head and then four more into his chest. It wasn't time to play nice.

I was almost ready to relax when a dark shape rose out of the body. It was roughly human in shape, but the details were all horribly wrong. It seemed to be made of something like black smoke or fog, and I could see through it. Hovering over the body of the Egyptian, it smiled at me with teeth that were strangely sharp and white.

"Domino," it crooned at me, "I will amuse me to force your friends to kill you."

Then it moved towards me. Very fast. I was backpedaling as I desperately slapped a new clip into my .45, but I knew in my gut that a gun wouldn't help against this thing.

Its claws sunk into me - not physically, but in a way that was far worse - and I screamed. Marie tried to tackle it, but she simply flew right through. Laura hacked at it with her claws, but she might was well have been trying to cut through wood-smoke.

Gritting my teeth, I fought as hard as I could, but I could feel myself beginning to slide down a long, steep slope. And down at the bottom something hungry was laughing wildly and opening its jaws unnaturally wide...

*GET AWAY FROM HER!* someone shouted in my head.

In a flash of white light, Emma appeared among us. Like the Egyptian, she was indistinct around the edges and you could partially see through her. With a wordless snarl, Emma grabbed the Egyptian and pulled him off and away from me. I collapsed onto the street, and Marie immediately knelt next to me and took me in her arms. Laura and Sooraya were standing in front of us. And overhead, Ororo hovered like a guardian spirit as thunder rolled and her winds scoured the street around us.

Our part of the fight was over. Betsy, Charles, Emma, and Jean were now hovering in their psychic forms around the Egyptian. Their faces were set and grim while he frantically looked around for some way to escape.

Nobody made any melodramatic speeches or did anything visible. And I can't really say I understood what happened. But the Egyptian suddenly began screaming. And it went on for a long time before he finally seemed to just fade away and vanish.

Marie helped me to my feet. I wasn't injured, I just hurt like hell.

Sooraya was sobbing as Laura clung to her.

Wet and wind-tossed, Ororo stared for a long time at the stretch of concrete where the Egyptian had finally died. Then she spat on it.

* * *

The cops never did appear. Instead, a boat-load of Logan's people showed up fairly quickly. Then they set up a perimeter around Ororo's apartment building.

I gave Betsy a long, hard look.

"You didn't want reinforcements?" she asked me irritably. "Just in case the Egyptian brought some of his troops with him? Or Lehnsherr decided to show up?"

Okay, she had a point. I apologetically waved off my objections.

About a half-hour later, Logan and Hank put in an appearance.

I told Logan the whole story as he examined me with cold, hard, and rather surprised eyes. Then he looked at Laura, who was keeping to the background near Sooraya and was obviously not sure what to say to him.

They went for a walk. After they came back, Laura and Sooraya got into a car and left with Logan. I would have given anything to see his reaction to Laura's claim that she was the father of Sooraya's baby.

Emma and Betsy kept a watch on what was left of the Egyptian's body. The psychics talked a lot of mumbo-jumbo about things like "the psychic plane" and "spirit survival" and "psionic entities" and "extra-planar death", but the gist of it was that they were pretty sure the Egyptian wasn't coming back this time. However, they weren't taking any chances and I wildly approved of that. Emma suggested destroying the body in a special, high-temperature crematoria that the University used for dangerous medical specimens. Scott and Bobby liked that idea and all four of them took off to take care of it.

Ororo and Warren almost had a hell of a fight. Warren roared into the apartment scared to death and ready to take on anybody or anything. When he saw that it was all over, he started to ask Ororo some hard questions about what had happened and why she hadn't called him. It only stopped when he saw that Ororo was shivering like a frightened rabbit. She hugged him tight and he hugged her back. As near as I can tell, that was the end of the fight.

Jean and a couple of Logan's people escorted Dr. Xavier to the train station. Charles and Jean seemed delighted to see one another again. They were chatting like old friends as she helped him into a taxi.

Marie and I went home and she re-dressed the wound on my leg. We tried to eat dinner, but we weren't really hungry. Then we took a bath together and went to bed early. And we made love over and over again. I knew there would be more to the story, but just for that night I just wanted to forget everything else and be with Marie.

* * *

The next day, I went through channels and politely asked to see Erik. He agreed. We met in a small restaurant in the old German part of town. As was usually the case, he didn't have any visible bodyguards with him. I can't make up my mind if he's supremely self-confident - or has somebody or something in his corner that we can't see.

"Do you know what happened to the Egyptian?" I asked.

He put down the wine-list and nodded.

"The news of what happened was hard to miss," he said urbanely. "Dealing with him was most distasteful, and his death is a very good thing. That is why I'm buying you lunch. I recommend the sauerbraten."

The waiter stopped by and Erik ordered a bottle of wine. I waited until that was done.

"I'm checking to make sure the Laura isn't a problem," I continued. "And to make it clear that I didn't take her from you."

Erik sighed, "The exact sequence of events that led to Laura's escape are known to me. And I am aware that you were not involved."

I nodded, "Okay, I'm glad that's settled. But what about Laura?"

He put his menu down and looked at me speculatively.

"I'm not sure I catch your meaning, Domino."

"Do you still want her?"

He looked disgusted and shook his head, "No. Such a course of action at the present time would be very unwise. Frankly, I consider my involvement with Laura to have been a bit of a fiasco. I had hoped to acquire some leverage over Logan, but I should have known that the apple did not fall very far from the tree."

I chuckled, "Believe me, I know what you're talking about. She's a handful."

The waiter stopped by with a bottle of wine. He and Erik went through that formal routine where Erik decided he would accept the bottle. Then the waiter poured for us.

I took a sip from my glass. Erik had made an excellent choice. The wine was outstanding.

"So where is she from, anyway?" I asked idly. "At first, I assumed Logan was her father, but she swears that's not true."

Erik hesitated before answering, "The people who made Logan into what he is are still in business. And they are continuing in their efforts to create the perfect soldier. The details about Laura are complicated, but he is not her father, although you could say that she is related to him."

"And you bought Laura from those guys?"

He smiled, "At a bargain price. It seems they were having problems handling her."

That made me laugh.

Erik picked up the menu, "At least now she is Logan's problem."

"I feel kind of sorry for him." I said. And I meant it.

Foolish me. If I had even the faintest clue of the problem Laura was going to be in the future, I would have immediately jumped up from the table, ran to my office, grabbed Marie, and fled to the west coast.

* * *

I was walking from the restaurant to my car when a Rolls-Royce limo pulled up beside me. Two guesses who was inside.

The rear window rolled down and Emma smiled at me. "Get in," she ordered.

I shrugged and did as I was told. Hey, I owed the lady. The back of her Rolls was bigger than some apartments I've lived in. A lot posher, too. The driver was separated from us by a glass partition. A curtain that could be slid across the partition made it possible to hide whatever was going on in the back from the driver. I idly wondered how often Emma found it necessary to do that.

"Would you care for a drink?" Emma asked when she noticed that I was staring at the built-in wet-bar.

I laughed, "No thanks, Emma. I just had a few with Erik. The guy has a hollow leg. Sometimes I think he and Logan should settle their differences with a drinking contest. It would be quite a match."

Emma chuckled and shook her head.

"So what do you want?" I asked.

"I wanted to apologize," she said. "I certainly didn't intend to get you into a situation that dangerous. Actually, I rather hoped that you would let the case go once I mentioned the Egyptian."

I nodded, "I came close to doing just that, but I got curious. And..."

Then I hesitated, not sure what else to say.

"Domino, your curiousity is going to get you killed one of these days," Emma said sharply.

"Probably," I replied with a sigh, "But while you're here, there's something I've been wondering about. What was it that Erik wanted you to do? I think we can safely say that you don't owe him your silence any longer."

Emma didn't hesitate, "He wanted a psychic scan of the city. Erik was hoping I could find that very lethal young lady he'd lost."

"No luck?"

"Finding somebody that you do not know via a psychic scan is quite tricky," Emma answered. And, yeah, I noticed that she didn't quite answer my question. But just as obviously, she hadn't told Erik where to find Laura. A lot of people aren't sure where Emma fits in - is she one of the good guys or one of the bad guys? I confess to having some doubts of my own on that score. But I was willing to say that Emma had been on the right side of the street in this particular mess.

"One other thing," Emma said.

"What's that?"

"I'm considering starting a school," Emma continued.

I certainly didn't expect that. The idea of Emma as a school-teacher made me smile.

She rolled her eyes at me, "Stop that, Domino. The idea is that I'll provide the money for a special school: a school for young people who are like us. More and more people with unique abilities are appearing. And it's time somebody came up with a way of helping youngsters with special powers adapt to this world - or else more of them will end up in the hands of people like the Eqyptian."

That made me frown thoughtfully, "Okay. I see your point. But what's it to me?"

"I'll need teachers, Dom."

I laughed out loud, "Oh, come on, Emma! You can't mean me!"

"I do," Emma said flatly.

"What would I teach? Dirty fighting and gunplay?"

"You don't consider those to be important skills?" Emma replied archly.

Well... "Of course, but what about the more traditional stuff?"

Emma didn't seem put-off by my skepticism, "I'm working on that."

"Has anyone else signed on with this crazy idea?"

"So far, I've talked to three other people. They all agree that the idea has merit."

"Who are they?" I asked immediately.

"Logan, Erik, and Charles Xavier," Emma replied.

I gave Emma the raised eyebrow, "Logan and Erik have agreed to this?"

Emma nodded, her eyes narrow and calculating, "I mentioned how Laura's presence came close to starting a war between them. And how the Egyptian had managed to keep Sooraya - a fairly powerful young lady - under his thumb without anyone being the wiser. If it was understood that those sort of children were to be cared for in a neutral setting, it might prevent quite a few problems."

"You've got a point," I conceded.

"You'll consider my offer?" Emma asked.

I slowly nodded my head, "I can't promise anything right now, Emma, but... well... I think you've got a good idea here. Put me on the list of people interested in what you're trying to do."

"This isn't going to happen tomorrow," Emma sighed. "It will take some time to organize, but I'll be in touch."

I nodded again.

* * *

Over the next few days, the fallout continued. Through the grapevine, I heard that Erik and Logan had a long, long talk. A lot of people held their breath while that was going on, but nothing lethal happened and the peace held. As near as I can tell, Logan decided to ignore the fact that Erik had been trying to play games with him. Erik gritted his teeth and swallowed the losses in time and money and pride that he'd taken in bringing Laura to town - and then losing her. Personally, I wondered if Emma's crazy scheme of setting up some kind of school for kids like Sooraya and Laura had something to do with the lack of hostilities. Had Emma managed to find a point of common ground between them? And how much of that had been a part of Emma's plan all along?

A week after the Egyptian departed this mortal coil for a place with a much warmer climate, Marie and I got a very nice bonus from Logan.

"We're rich," I said to Marie. Which really wasn't true, but it sure sounded good.

Marie smiled as she tucked back a rebellious wisp of hair, "You're taking me out to dinner tonight. At a fancy place. Then we'll go for drinks and dancing. If you play your cards right, I might do something exciting and indecent to you in the car while we're driving home. So wear a skirt - and don't bother with panties."

That certainly sounded interesting. We sealed the deal with a kiss. And then Sooraya walked in the office. It occurred to me that we were going to have to start locking the damned door.

"Hello," Sooraya said, obviously she was mildly embarrassed to catch us at such a personal moment. It actually took me a second to recognize her, and her voice gave it away more than anything else. The veil was gone. Her hair was in a long ponytail and somebody had convinced her to wear a prim black dress and a pair of low heels. She looked great.

"Hey, kid," I said in surprise as Marie shook her head and stepped back from me. "Uhm... everything's okay, right? Why are you here?"

"I work here," Sooraya said as she glanced at Marie.

I blinked hard. Then I noticed that Marie was smiling.

"Marie!" I yelled.

"I'm the office manager," Marie said serenely. "So I can hire new help if we need it."

"But we don't need any help!" I protested.

That was when Marie dropped five file folders on my desk. They were case-folders. New case-folders. I dazedly picked one of them up and flipped through it.

"We helped ice the Egyptian," Marie continued. "And Logan is saying good things about us to everyone who will listen. So our credit on the street is really strong. I had to turn down two other jobs this morning - so it's time to hire somebody."

I looked through the other case-folders, reading the summaries as I went. The money looked... good. Real good.

Wow.

Then I looked at Sooraya and said warily, "What do you know about being a private eye?"

She didn't even hesitate before replying, "Nothing, but Miss Marie hired me as a secretary."

I gave "Miss Marie" a long look.

"I've had it with sitting here and chewing my nails down to nothing as you get into God knows what kinds of trouble," she declared with absolute finality. "From now on, when you're on a case, I'm with you."

I looked to heaven for guidance. No luck. And actually, there wasn't a lot to complain about. When you get down to it, Marie is just as capable on the job as I am. In some ways, maybe more.

"I can file and type and do bookkeeping," Sooraya offered helpfully. "And I speak five languages."

Then Sooraya gently touched her bulging belly, "And Mr. Logan has said he will pay for my baby when he comes. So that won't be a problem."

I nodded warily. Then a worrisome thought suddenly occured to me. "What about Laura?" I asked.

Sooraya smiled fondly, "We have a small apartment uptown and she is taking classes. Logan and I have convinced her that learning English, math, science, history, and dance will make her a better assassin."

"She's in a school!?" I gasped in horror. My stomach was turning over as I visualized the potential carnage the first time a young boy with a case of puppy-love shoved a frog into her face.

"No," Sooraya said as she shook her head, "For now, she has private tutors. Logan and I both hope she can someday have a more normal childhood, but for now..."

I nodded in relief. And suddenly, Emma's idea about a special school for - what was that word Doctor Xavier used? Mutants? - seemed like a good idea instead of a wild one.

Marie had that "I'm not budging an inch" look about her. Grudgingly giving in to the inevitable, I picked up one of the case-folders and opened it.

"Which case do you want to start with?" Marie asked.

"The Stark job," I said absently as I read the file.

"What's that?" Sooraya asked curiously.

"Tony Stark. He's a zillionaire inventor who has his fingers in a lot of pies. He wants another rich guy - a pretty-boy named Bruce Wayne - followed. Nothing specific, just regular reports on what Wayne's doing and who he's seeing."

"Yeah, that sounds like a fairly dull job," Marie inserted thoughtfully. "Probably financial espionage."

"Probably," I agreed, "but I heard on the radio that Wayne will be in town this afternoon, so this case goes to the top of the list. And a simple job like this will be a good place to start."

"Let's go!" Marie purred. There was an eager smile on her face.

I couldn't help but grin.


	3. The Case of the Burning Bones

THE CASE OF THE BURNING BONES

"I wish to employ your services," the broken man sitting in front of my desk said. Despite his strange appearance, his voice was filled with calm authority.

Soorya - the Afghani girl who's my secretary - was frightened, but trying not to show it. Marie hovered behind me, ready for anything, but trying not to look threatening. I was sitting at my desk, trying to look professional. All in all, there was more acting going on in the office of Domino Investigations than in your typical movie.

Our guest, on the other hand, was certainly more composed than we were. Otherwise, he looked terrible. He was thin and gaunt and I found myself wondering when he'd last eaten. His clothes were shabby and unkept... although if you looked close you'd notice that both he and they were reasonably clean. That's a tough trick to pull off when you live on the streets. I found myself wondering how he pulled it off.

I suppose it was the mask that bothered people the most. It covered the left side of his face, from forehead to chin. It was made of tin and once it had been painted to resemble human flesh, but now it was battered and worn to the point that nothing but bare metal showed. It was intended to conceal a terrible, disfiguring injury and you could see tendrils of scar-tissue creeping out from under the half-mask's edges. It was the best that the modern world could do for people who had somehow lost their faces. The Great War had produced more than a few such men and the story on the street was that the Tinman was one of them.

Our prospective client was a common sight around the dingier parts of town. He was a kook who rambled about, mouthing nonsense, but generally keeping to himself. Everyone assumed that the war that had destroyed his face had also wrecked his mind. People looked at his mask, called him the Tinman, and tried to pretend that he didn't exist. Mutilated and mad are a bad combination. People don't like being reminded that we're all living on the edge of an abyss, and it's all too easy to fall in.

I'd last seen the Tinman just a month ago, being escorted out of the financial district by a pair of strangely nervous police officers. He was calmly telling the cops that one of the most prominent men in town was actually the leader of a Satanic cult.

Sooraya placed a cup of tea on the table next to the man, bowed silently, and backed away. The Tinman gratefully picked up the cup in a hand that was missing two fingers and spotted with puckered burn scars. Then he pulled a wooden straw out of his pocket and put it in the teacup. He said something to Sooraya just before he took a sip. Sooraya and I both blinked in surprise. I don't speak Pashtun, but I've picked up a few basic phrases from Sooraya. The Tinman had just thanked Sooraya in her own language.

"How can we help you?" I asked. I had a wretched feeling how this was going to go. I don't really have the time for charity work and I doubted that the Tinman either had the money to pay us or had a story that would make any sense. So I'd listen to what he had to say and then try to gently shrug him off.

The Tinman used the hand that wasn't holding his tea to fish a ragged sheet of paper from the interior of his coat. He put it on my desk and I automatically picked it up. It was an envelope that had been split open to expose more surface area. Judging from the smell, it had been fished out of a trash can.

On what had been the exterior of the envelope was a pair of names and addresses that indicated it had been sent from a stationary shop to a law firm. But on what had been the envelope interior was a quite passable sketch of a boy and a woman. They resembled each other and I assumed they were mother and son. She was handsome, but care-worn. The boy looked on the scrawny side.

"The boy will be important someday," the Tinman said intently. "And there are men in town who wish to harm him. I want you to find the boy and keep him safe."

Right. I sighed internally and opened my mouth to tell the Tinman that I couldn't help him.

To my utter amazement, five gold coins clattered onto my desktop. Double eagles. You don't see that sort of thing too often nowadays. And that was obviously a lot of money for a man who was supposedly a homeless derelict to be throwing around.

"What's the boy's name?" I asked.

"I don't know," the Tinman said regretfully.

"Do you know where he lives?"

"No. However, I have seen him and his mother at Union Park. I believe she sometimes works as a charwoman."

"Why is the boy so important?"

"I don't know."

"Who wants to hurt him?"

"Men who are in the service of a tremendous evil. It is important that they be stopped."

Well, that was certainly informative. The Tinman's one remaining eye met my eyes. It was blue and seemed clear and sane. Marie put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently.

I slid four of the coins back towards the Tinman, leaving one on my side of the desk. Twenty dollars was about right for a job that I suspected would go nowhere.

"We'll take a look," I said. "But given that we don't have a lot to work with, I can't promise much."

"I'm sure you will do your best," said the Tinman as he scooped up the other four coins. Then he finished his tea and stood up. "I will visit you again tomorrow to see if you've had any luck."

Just before he left, the Tinman paused and said something to Sooraya. Sooraya taken aback.

"What was that?" Marie asked after the door closed behind our new client.

Sooraya was eight months pregnant. She frowned and touched her belly. "He said my baby will be a boy. And someday he will be a mighty warrior."

* * *

As we drove to Union Park, Marie asked to see the coin the Tinman had given me. I handed it over and she examined it carefully.

"Minted in 1894, but it looks brand new," she said thoughtfully as she held it up in the light and turned it over and over in her hands.

"You think it's fake?" I asked.

Marie shook her head, "No. It has the feel and heft of real gold. But where does a crazy street bum get five of these?"

I shrugged, "Good question. I wondered the same thing myself."

She handed the coin back to me and I pocketed it awkwardly between shifting gears.

"We better keep quiet about those coins," Marie added.

I nodded. This city was filled with people who wouldn't hesitate to rob or even kill the Tinman if they knew he was carrying around that kind of money. There's something about gold... Money makes people evil, but gold makes people evil and crazy.

"What do you know about the Tinman?" Marie asked.

I shook my head, "Nothing much. According to what I've heard, he was injured in the war and has been wandering the streets for years."

"What was he before the war? What's his real name?"

"No idea," I replied. For some reason, my answer bothered me. It didn't seem right that whoever the Tinman had once been was gone and forgotten.

* * *

The Depression was still kicking the country's ass and a lot of people were still in trouble. Union Park had a soup kitchen, but it was also a place where people without jobs gathered to look for work. If you asked around, you could get anything from violin lessons to a blowjob.

Marie and I were quartering the area, trying to spot our boy or his mother. We weren't quite at the stage where we would start showing people the Tinman's sketch. If the kid was really in danger, I wanted to find him before anyone knew we were looking for him.

We weren't having any luck. But then I spotted some guys who just didn't fit in with the rest of the crowd. There were three of them. All tough-looking characters dressed in new, off-the-rack suits. And from the way they were scanning the crowd, they also seemed to be looking for someone.

Marie and I casually drifted back together.

"What do you think?" Marie said. Tension was causing some of her Southern accent to creep into her voice.

"These guys could have nothing to do with our case," I said reasonably. "But if so, it's a hell of a coincidence."

"Want me to tap one?" Marie asked.

I frowned. Marie was offering to "accidentally" bump into one of the new guys. Her power might very well knock the guy flat, but she would get a look into the guy's head. That could provide a lot of useful information, but at the cost of letting them know that someone with powers was also involved in the search. My gut said it was too soon to take it that far.

"Tail them," I told Marie. She doesn't stick out in a crowd as much as I do. And she can more than take care of herself.

"Okay," Marie nodded. "But what are you going to do?"

"Talk to Fred."

"Fred?" Marie said in surprise. Then she looked around.

And there he was. Big as life. Bigger, as a matter of fact. Fred Dukes, doing the work of three men as he unloaded a truck full of donated food for the hungry crowd.

"I'll be damned," Marie said with a small smile.

* * *

Fred is a big, round, tough-guy who works for a petty gangster named Pietro, doing jobs that require more muscle than brains. Oddly enough, once upon a time I used to work for Pietro as well, which is how Fred and I met. How I ended up with Pietro is a long story - I once thought there was more to him than there actually was. Fred has a soft spot for me, and I use that ruthlessly. I can't help but feel bad about that, but Fred knows a lot of people and is a great window into the world of small gangs and low-rent crooks.

"Dom!" Fred said with a big, gap-toothed grin. He had four man-sized bags of vegetables - ingredients for the soup kitchen - slung over his huge shoulders.

"Hey, Fred," I replied as I hefted another bag from the truck and followed him into the tent kitchen.

Fred dropped his sacks onto a roughly knocked-together table that groaned under the weight. I decided to put mine on floor next to the table as Fred paused to wipe sweat from his forehead. A trio of older women dressed in aprons - Salvation Army volunteers - began opening the bags and organizing the contents. In the background, huge pots of water were being brought to a boil on a pair of old Army field stoves. Something like a dozen people were tending the pots, chopping vegetables, and counting out freshly washed bowls and spoons.

"I didn't know you were volunteering here!" Fred said delightedly. A malformed turnip had spilled onto the floor. Fred absent-mindedly picked it up and began munching on it like an apple.

"I'm not. But I saw you and thought you might need a hand."

"Great! Hey... are you on a case?"

Fred's smarter than he looks, which is not hard to do, I suppose. I pulled the carefully folded sketch that the Tinman had given me out of my jacket pocket and showed it to him.

"Do you know them?" I asked.

Fred didn't even hesitate, "Yeah, I've seen her around. Nice rack. Friendly, too. I kinda worry about the kid, though. He doesn't seem real healthy. Barely eats."

"Do you know her name?"

Fred shook his head, "Never caught it."

"Any idea where they live?"

"In that Hooverville under the Lincoln bridge."

Bingo.

"Thanks, Fred," I said. Then I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. He actually blushed.

Outside the tent, the crowd was forming up into a line despite the fact the food wouldn't be ready for an hour to two. One thing poor people always have is time.

Marie was waiting for me.

"Got anything?" I asked.

She nodded toward the park entrance. The three guys in suits were standing there, talking to a young, dark-complected woman who had black, unfashionably short hair. She was wearing tight-fitting brown leather pants and a matching jacket and was sitting on a motorcycle as she talked to the men.

"The mooks are Germans," Marie said quietly. "I got close enough to hear them talking to each other, but I don't know the lingo well enough to know what they're saying. Their English, on the other hand, is damn near perfect. You'd swear they all came from the Midwest. They're asking around for the mother, but all they have is a description."

Marie paused to glance at the girl on the motorcycle, "I don't know who she is. She just showed up."

"Her name's Maria Hill," I said. "She's a competitor."

Marie raised an eyebrow, "A private dick?"

"More of a a private dyke," I said with a smile.

Marie gave me a look that was half-disgusted and half-amused. "Some might say that describes us."

I grinned at Marie, "Yep. Hey... speaking of which, when are you going to stop wearing skirts and high-heels and start wearing pants and sensible shoes?"

"Never. I have to keep up appearances. I'm obviously the submissive, feminine half of our unnatural relationship."

I either laughed or snorted at that. It was hard to tell the difference.

"Besides," Marie said softly, her eyes still on the unlikely group at the park entrance, "wouldn't you miss that magical moment where you reach under my skirt and slide off my panties? Remember last month, when we were on that stakeout in your car?"

I winced. The guy we had been watching walked out of his house at exactly the wrong moment. Sex with your stakeout partner is really unprofessional, but whenever Marie and I are alone and don't have much else to keep us occupied... well, they say idle hands are the devil's workshop.

"Maybe we better talk about something else," I said hastily.

"Did Fred have anything?" Marie asked.

"He says he's seen the mother and the boy. He didn't know any names, but he says they live under the Lincoln bridge."

As we watched, Maria and the Germans came to some kind of decision. Maria zoomed off on her motorcyle, headed uptown. The Germans got into a brand-new Ford and headed downtown.

There was a collection box for the soup kitchen on a table near the park's entrance. I dropped the Tinman's gold coin into it as we walked out of the park.

* * *

Marie looked around at the shantytown that we were standing in with no particular expression. In her bright dress, she stood out, but her part of the South hasn't seen much in the way of prosperity since General Sherman visited it back in 1864. She once told me that she was a teenager before she owned a pair of shoes. When you got down to it, she was more used to both the sight and the reality of grinding poverty than I was.

The old man squinted at the sketch I was holding in front of him as he meditatively sucked on his teeth.

"Yeah... yeah... I know her," he said. "Mrs. Rogers. She's a widow - and a nice gal. She used to live over there."

The old man punctuated his words by pointing at a hovel made up of fragments of wooden packing crates. It leaned precariously against the corner of a bridge stanchion. I suppose it might help keep off the worst of the rain and cold, but not by much. At the moment, a ragged looking teenager was sitting cross-legged in the irregular entrance-way, moaning softly to himself as he rocked slowly back-and-forth. Opium, if I had to make a guess. and he was in pretty deep. He'd be dead in a few months. Or weeks.

"Used to live there?" I repeated.

The old man nodded vigorously, "She got a job as a cleaning woman at a downtown hotel. It's called the Clarion. Part of the job is that they give her and her boy room and board. It sounded like a good deal."

Marie gave the old man a buck. His eyes just about popped out of his head.

* * *

The Clarion Hotel had seen better days, but it was still a respectable place for out-of-towners to spend a night or two. Which meant that the house detective took one look at Marie and I and immediately accosted us before we got halfway into the lobby.

"Ladies," he began carefully. "There is a hotel just down the street called the Grandview that you might find more suitable."

The Grandview was actually a nice place. And it was more willing to tolerate same-sex couples than a lot of other high-end hotels. Marie and I had stayed there once as a treat after we closed a big case. She got a huge kick out of the room service.

Actually, I had to give the house detective credit. It's not like Marie and I were carrying picket signs that said "LESBIAN STRUMPETS!" in big red letters, yet he had picked us out immediately. And he was being polite about it and making a good recommendation.

I reached for the thin leather wallet that held my private eye license - this city doesn't actually have a badge for PIs - and said, "We're here on business."

The guy took a deep breath and said, "Never the less, ladies..."

"Look at me," Marie said very flatly, before I could show the house detective my license.

The house detective blinked and gave Marie a long look. Then a look of startled recognition appeared on his face. And then he turned pale. Marie used to be with a guy called Logan. Logan runs the biggest and baddest gang in town. Marie and Logan weren't an item any longer, but not everyone knew that. And in any case, it really wasn't worth taking the chance that Logan might not feel protective about an old girlfriend. Hell, it was something I thought about every now and then. I knew for a fact that Logan still cared for Marie.

"My friend and I are going to go where we want and do what we want in this place," Marie said quietly. "And if I decide to eat her out on that fine piano sitting over there in the corner, you will do nothing more than politely hand me a napkin when I'm done with her. Understand?"

The detective nodded jerkily.

"Now, go away."

The detective nodded again and vanished.

"I have two things to say," I said after a long and startled pause.

Marie cocked her head at me, but didn't say anything.

"First off - that was maybe too much. The guy was just doing his job. And he was trying to be polite about it. And we might have been able to play the professional courtesy card once we explained that we didn't want a room."

Marie shrugged, "Maybe, but I get sick of the bullshit sometimes. And we do have to find Mrs. Rogers before those other guys do."

"You're right. But let's be a little careful about dropping the Logan bomb. It draws attention."

"Okay, but what's the second thing you have to say?" Marie asked.

"That I'm so turned on right now that the piano thing actually sounds like a good idea."

Marie smiled and ran her fingers through the white streak in her hair. "Later. I'd prefer a little more privacy."

* * *

After our little encounter with the house detective, the rest of the Clarion's staff weren't inclined to give us any trouble. We found Mrs. Rogers within a few minutes. She was in the middle of making a bed in a fourth floor room when I politely knocked on the open door.

"Sorry. I'll be done in just a few minutes," Mrs. Rogers told us. She was probably in her late twenties or early thirties, but her blonde hair already had a touch of gray. She wasn't pretty anymore - living in a shack underneath a bridge will do that to you - but her trim body and strong features would still draw a second look from most men. Her voice had the merest trace of an Irish accent. She'd probably been really young when her family came to America from the old country.

Now came the tricky part. I had to convince Mrs. Rogers to cooperate with us when she had no reason in the world to do that.

I had just opened my mouth when we heard a rapid pair of shots. They came from somewhere downstairs.

* * *

Despite the fact she was wearing high heels, Marie beat me to the stairwell. But I passed her as we clattered down the steps. Once I broke into the lobby, a continuous, high-pitched scream directed me behind the check-in desk.

I had my .45 automatic out as I entered the hotel's back office. The house detective was on the floor, his blood soaking into the threadbare carpet and a short-barreled .38 revolver loosely gripped in his dead hand.

A back door that obviously led into the alley behind the hotel was open. A desk clerk was screaming at the top of her lungs as she stared at the body of the house detective. A frightened bellhop took one look at me, made the assumption that I was a lady cop, and pointed to the door and yelled, "That way! He went that way! And he's got Steve!"

It was fifty-fifty which way I should be pointing my gun when I ran into the alley. I trusted to my luck - always a good bet for me - and found myself aiming at the mouth of the alleyway. One of the Germans from Union Park had an automatic pistol in one hand and little Steve Rogers firmly grabbed in the other. The kid was fighting, but he was a scrawny little thing and the German was manhandling him without much problem.

Maria Hill was there as well. She looked shocked and pissed-off. I understood. I hate working with violence-prone idiots, too. Hill had a revolver and as I watched she pointed it at the thug's head and snarled in passable German, "Put the weapon down and let the kid go!"

The German hesitated, obviously surprised by what Hill was doing. I added to his woes by pointing my .45 at him and yelling, "Drop it!"

Neither Hill or I wanted to take a shot while there was a kid near our target. That made sense, but maybe we should have done it anyway.

The German looked at Hill. Then he looked at me. Then he smiled and dropped his gun. The smile should have warned us. The German said something. It was a word with a lot more consonants than vowels. I didn't recognize the language.

And then Maria Hill burst into flames.

* * *

Hill screamed like a damned soul and collapsed. The German ran, dragging the kid behind him. I took a distracted shot at him, but only managed to clip the alley wall. Otherwise, there wasn't any time to think. I sprinted forward, pulling off my jacket as I went. I was going to try to use it to smother the flames that were engulfing Hill, even though I had a sick feeling in my gut that there wasn't a hospital in the world that could save her. Hill was on fire from head to foot, but maybe all of that leather motorcycle gear she was wearing would protect her enough to...

My footsteps faltered and I ground to an amazed halt as Maria Hill slowly climbed to her feet. Her face was gone and replaced by a burning skull. The brighter flames in the skull's sockets seemed to look right at me from the hottest part of hell.

Impossibly, the jaws of the skull worked as it tried to speak to me.

"Sinner," it finally said. Its voice sounded like hot steam grumbling its way through the boiler of a battleship.

Without thinking, I emptied my .45 into the thing that used to be Maria Hill. All six shots slammed into its chest. The cumulative effect was that it staggered backwards a few steps. And that was all.

It was impossible that the thing before me could smile, but as it looked at me, it seemed to do just that.

I turned and ran back into the hotel.

* * *

"Run! RUN!" I yelled as I barreled my way back into the hotel.

Marie had finally caught up to me. She was carrying her shoes in one hand and the handgun she keeps in her purse was in the other. The bellhop was on his knees, trying to do the impossible by pressing a folded up towel against the house detective's wounds. The clerk had stopped screaming and was on the phone, frantically calling for help.

The civilians gaped at me. Marie moved off to the side and leveled her gun at the door. Nobody ran. So much for any leadership abilities I might have thought I possessed.

Than the thing that had been Maria Hill followed me into the room. It's flames cast a strange yellow-orange light and the temperature immediately jumped about ten degrees.

The bellhop didn't make a sound as he finally took my advice and sprinted away. The clerk started screaming again as she dropped the phone, but at least she followed the bellhop out into the lobby.

Marie didn't scream. She just fired her pistol carefully and precisely, emptying the cylinder. I didn't bother to look behind me, but I was willing to bet she scored more hits than not. The problem was, her .38 wasn't going to stop something that had just absorbed a half-dozen .45 slugs. But apparently her gunfire bought us some time.

I grabbed Marie's arm as I ran past her. I could feel my luck flowing into her. Good, she was going to need all she could get.

Together, we scrambled over the desk that separated the office from the lobby. The thing behind us just ploughed through it. There was a tremendous crash and chunks of wood exploded everywhere. A half-dozen guests who were in the lobby, drawn by the noise and excitement, watched us in amazement. But once they saw the thing, they shrieked in unison and scattered in every direction.

Marie and I lunged through the front door and out onto the sidewalk. The thing followed us by jumping through the plate-glass window that was the pride and joy of the Clarion Hotel. It was fast and it didn't seem to have to worry about obstructions. And we didn't have any way to stop it.

We were in trouble. It would take the wildest stroke of luck for us to survive.

The wildest stroke of luck was in the process of getting out of a car in front of the Clarion. It was Kitty Pryde, one of this city's crazier powered hitters. She works for Logan. She and I really don't like each other, but at the moment that wasn't much of an issue. Her eyes were comically wide as she stared at the wild scene unfolding in front of her.

"Hi, Kitty," Marie said almost conversationally. Then she wrapped her arm around Kitty and planted a big kiss on her lips. With her other arm, she hooked me in until we were all three locked into an awkward embrace. Then all three of us went desolid and fell through the sidewalk and several yards of concrete, brick, and earth, before tumbling into a sewer tunnel. Just before we vanished under the earth, I could have sworn I heard the thing pursuing us roar in rage.

* * *

"I'm gonna kill you both," Kitty gasped after she spat out a mouthful of unspeakably foul water.

"Looks like you're going to have to wait your turn," I snapped back as Marie helped me to my feet. I was woozy from all of the contact with her.

"What the hell was that thing?" Marie gasped.

"Maria Hill," I answered distractedly.

"What?!" Marie exclaimed.

"I'M GONNA KILL YOU BOTH!" Kitty screeched as she produced a switchblade from somewhere and flicked it open. She has a nasty knife-fighting style that involves sliding in and out of solidity. Yeah, she can do that sort of thing. Kitty's a dangerous piece of work, but at the moment she was trembling and barely keeping on her feet. Marie's power had done a job on her.

"Your powers aren't working right now," Marie told Kitty as she gingerly stepped out of the water and onto a short ledge that was adjacent to the watercourse.

"What?!" Kitty said as she paused in confusion. To be fair, a lot was happening to her at once.

I broke Kitty's nose and took her knife away.

* * *

We walked a couple of blocks and then I climbed an access ladder and shouldered open a manhole cover. I imagine we were quite the sight as we crawled out of the sewers. More than a few people stopped to stare at us. Down the street, a crowd was gathering in front of the Clarion Hotel, but I couldn't see any sign of the thing that had been chasing us. And besides, the crowd indicated that it wasn't in the area any longer. I can't imagine anyone who saw it would stick around.

"We should keep moving," I told Marie and Kitty.

Marie helped Kitty out of the manhole.

"I'm gonna kill you both," Kitty wept. Her nose was assuming epic size and color, both eyes were turning black, and blood was dribbling down her chin. I think the tears were more from humiliation than pain. Kitty's crazy and I'm not sure she actually feels pain like normal people.

"Don't pull a weapon on us again," I said shortly.

"Would it do any good if we said we were sorry?" Marie asked.

"No. I'm gonna kill..."

"WE KNOW!" I yelled.

"Come on, Kitty," Marie said softly. "We've got to get out of here. And then we'll get cleaned up and I'll take a look at your nose."

Kitty hesitated. Then she nodded. Damned if I know how Marie does that.

* * *

The apartment that Marie and I shared was closer than my office, so we went there. A while back, we decided to move in together. Our new apartment was an okay place - certainly better than the places where we both live before, but I sometimes missed Marie's old apartment. It had been the size of a largish closet and there'd been a huge neon sign that blinked all night long just outside her window. The first time we made love had been there. I remembered the way the alternating red light took turns revealing and concealing her nude body...

I shook my head to clear it. We didn't have time to be either nostalgic or horny.

We took turns in the shower. Kitty ended up in Marie's old robe. Given how small Kitty is, she looked like a kid wearing some of her big sister's clothes.

Marie cleaned up Kitty as best she could, put some cotton in her nostrils to soak up the blood, set her nose, and then put some surgical tape over it to keep it in place until Kitty could see a real doctor. A few years in the PI business - first as a secretary and then as an actual investigator - had given her a fair amount of practical experience with the kinds of injuries that come with the job.

Kitty had finally calmed down. I knew this incident was going to end up high on the list of reasons why Kitty hated me, but at least she wasn't in one of her psycho rages at the moment.

"What were you doing at the hotel?" I asked Kitty as I put a shot of whiskey in front of her.

Kitty drained the glass immediately and then held it out for more.

"I wasn't going into the hotel. I was going into the barbershop next door. It's one of our bookie shops and I was going to walk the receipts home. Just what the hell did I run into?"

I refilled her glass. "We're on a case. The details are messy and it got kind of weird. I don't know for sure where the burning skeleton fits in."

Kitty shook her head, "You know something? I don't really care. I don't want to know. You're a pain in the ass, Domino. Trouble follows you everywhere."

I couldn't argue with that.

Then Kitty looked at Marie, "For God's sake, Rogue. Ditch this crazy bitch. Come back to us. Logan will take you back in a heartbeat - you know that."

Marie just smiled sadly, but didn't say anything. Then she reached over and pushed a stray lock of Kitty's hair away from her eyes. It says something about Kitty that she didn't flinch away from Marie's touch.

Kitty sighed and slugged down her whiskey.

* * *

Kitty drank a lot more of my whiskey. Then she put on her still-damp clothes, made a dispirited-sounding threat or two in my direction, and tottered unsteadily out the door.

"What now?" Marie asked me.

I shrugged. "We find the kid and get him back."

"How do we find him? We don't have any leads."

I sighed and stretched. It had been a tough day so far and it wasn't done yet.

"Actually, we do have one lead - Maria Hill. She pulled a gun on the German who grabbed the kid. I think she got hired by the Germans because she was a local who knew the city. Then she found out she was involved in something she didn't like."

"And then she turned into a horrible, burning, skeleton-monster and chased us out of the hotel," Marie pointed out.

"There's that," I conceded.

"How do we find Hill?" Marie asked.

"Let's start with the basics. She's in the phone book."

* * *

Actually, nobody was more surprised than me when a tired sounding Maria Hill picked up her office phone.

"Hill here," she said.

I took a deep breath and said, "Hill... this is Domino."

There was a moment of silence, then Hill said, "Dom, what the hell is going on?"

I managed not to laugh, "Actually, I was kind of hoping you could explain it to me. Who are those German guys?"

She did laugh, but it sounded bitter. "They're not who they told me they were, that's for sure. They said they were German private cops, looking for a woman who'd been a maid for a banker. She was supposedly with him while he was on a long business trip here in the states. They told me she'd stolen some jewelry from him - family heirloom stuff. The banker wanted the jewelry back, but couldn't take it to the cops because he's married and was sticking it to the maid."

"Not a bad story. It covers all the bases," I said appreciatively. "Why'd they want you?"

"They needed a local who knew the streets and the people. Look, Dom, business has been tight lately and maybe I didn't ask enough questions, but when I heard those shots and then saw that guy grab the kid... I didn't hire on for that. The job wasn't supposed to be about hurting anyone."

"I know. I saw you pull a gun on the German and tell him to let go of the boy. I had a drop on him, too. But then you changed into... something."

Hill didn't say anything. I gave her some time to respond. The seconds stretched on.

"Hill?" I prompted.

"I don't know what happened to me, Dom," she said distantly. "I changed, but I was sort of still me. I can remember everything, but a lot of it doesn't make sense. I seemed to see... the bad things that people had done. It was like a black shroud around them. And it was my job to send that kind of person on to be punished."

My skin crawled. I didn't like the sound of, '...on to be punished.'

"But I couldn't do what I supposed to do," Hill continued, her voice still shockingly sane. "I should have gone after the German. He's a seriously bad guy. He likes to hurt people - women especially. There was a girl he killed in his home town when he was a kid. And another one when he was in the army. And one more after the war. It's what he does when they figure him out - when they become witnesses. And then he killed the house dick in that hotel when he tried to stop the kidnapping - I could see that, too. But something stopped me from dealing with him. And instead I went after you."

Hill stopped talking. And I could hear was gasping, tearing sound from the other end of the phone line. She was crying.

"Where's the boy?" I asked after giving her some time to get ahold of herself.

"They have rooms at a dockside hotel," Hill said brokenly. "It's called the Gold Rush. Maybe they have him there."

I shook my head, even though it was impossible for Hill to see it, "No way they're still there."

"Maybe they are. They don't know I know where they're staying. I followed them after our first meeting."

God bless the paranoia and curiosity of the typical private eye.

* * *

Marie was normally careful about the way she dressed. I think it has something to do with being raised dirt poor. But she made a face when I told her where we were going and changed into an outfit that made her look like the kind of girl you would expect to see on the docks.

"This is a new look for you," I observed.

"I'm just a poor working girl," she said, gazing in a mirror as she applied way too much bright red lipstick. "Down on my luck and forced to perform the vilest sexual acts in order to get by. In fact, I've fallen so low that I'm allowing myself to be used by an older *gasp* woman!"

"'Older woman?'," I quoted. Maybe my voice squeaked a bit in outrage.

Marie put down her lipstick and posed dramatically - eyes closed in anguish and her hand on her brow. "An older woman who will demand that I do things that defy the laws of God and nature! Naked and on my knees I will give the older temptress perverse oral pleasures as I tremble in utter humiliation, sure in the knowledge that the gates of Hell now yawn wide for me!"

"You're three months older than me!" I interrupted indignantly.

By now, Marie's Southern accent was in full bloom. "The last tattered shreds of my innocence stripped from me, I sob in utter degradation. Meanwhile, my cruel seducer contemptously casts a few coins on the floor! Meager payment for the perverse pleasures that were afforded her!"

"Hey, I didn't seduce you! You seduced me! Uh... wait a minute.. are you asking for a raise?"

Marie smiled as she put the cap on her lipstick. "My pay is just fine, thank you. And you're damn right I seduced you. You were such a frightened lamb the first time. Trembling like a virgin. It was adorable."

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn't really think of a response.

* * *

The Gold Rush Hotel wasn't exactly in any of the guide books. It was a three story brick building that was visibly falling apart. It was the kind of place that had two kinds of customers: sailors and their very temporary friends, and people who either didn't care or didn't have a choice about where they slept.

But now the hotel could add kidnappers its list of clientele.

Marie and I were in a run-down diner across the street from the hotel. Neither one of us were crazy enough to actually eat the food, but the coffee was passable. A few seconds ago, we'd seen one of the Germans exit the hotel long enough to buy a newspaper.

"You'd think the boy would raise a ruckus," Marie said thoughtfully.

"It's not the kind of place where anyone cares much about a screaming kid," I pointed out. "And besides, all they have to do is tell the boy to play ball or they'll kill his mom. That'll keep him quiet."

"So what's the plan?" Marie asked.

"Call the cops."

Marie raised an eyebrow. In between the corruption and the incompetence, the cops in this town are notably useless. Normally, we try to avoid them.

"If we try to spring the kid, they Germans will have every reason to fight," I explained. "After all, there's just the two of us. And the kid might get caught in the crossfire. But if the cops show up... well, that's a different ball of wax. There's a lot more incentive to be reasonable."

Marie thought about it and then nodded, "It's better than anything I can come up with."

"Right," I said agreeably. "So I'll..."

"Oh, crap," whispered Marie, her eyes suddenly gone wide.

I followed her gaze. Out in front of the Gold Rush Hotel, Maria Hill had just parked her motorcycle. As we watched, she calmly pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of her saddlebag, chambered a shell, and began walking into the hotel. She looked seriously pissed off.

"New plan," I said as I jumped to my feet.

"What?" Marie asked as she checked her purse to make sure her handgun was accessible.

"We make it up as we go along and try not to get killed."

"Sounds about right," Marie said as she followed me out the door.

* * *

We were almost to the door of the Gold Rush Hotel when we heard the shattering boom of the shotgun. After a brief pause, a couple of pistol shots responded. Rushing inside, we raced past a bunch of people who were either seeking cover or runing for the exits. The kind of people who work or stay in a place like the Gold Rush have fairly well developed survival instincts.

More shots came from upstairs. Marie and I advanced up the stairs in short rushes, one of us covering the other as they moved.

On the second floor, we found the fire-fight.

On the floor of the hallway, one of the Germans was missing a big chunk of his chest. Blood and fragments of flesh were splattered on the walls and floor. Further down the hall, another German was down and a shockingly huge pool of blood was pouring from his body. Hill was using a doorway for cover as she traded shots with someone else further down the hall. As I watched, she ran out of ammo. Dropping her shotgun, she leaned back and began pulling out a small automatic pistol.

Hill's eyes met mine. There was a nasty gash just above her right eye that was turning her face into a mask of blood. I could see a bullet wound oozing blood from her stomach - and that was bad place to get shot. She'd also been hit in one of her legs, and her left arm had been creased. I suppose Hill had decided that living would be nice, but it wasn't exactly a priority. That explained the suicidally direct assault.

The guy who'd been shooting at Hill realized that her shotgun was out of shells and that she was in middle of trading weapons. That made him brave enough to risk coming further out in the open in an effort to get a clearer shot at her. Apparently he was concentrating so hard on her that he hadn't notice me. I sighted my .45 and double-tapped a pair of slugs into him. He staggered back into the room he'd been shooting from.

I advanced down the hallway slowly, keeping my weapon pointed at the door the wounded German had vanished into. There was a pretty good chance he was out of the fight, but I didn't want to take the chance. And besides, there might be more than three of the guys. Behind me, I could sense Marie covering me. Hill came out of her doorway and began painfully staggering down the hall, leaning against the wall for support. She left a long smear of blood on the wall behind her. I made a mental note to never piss her off.

The possibility that Hill might at any second turn into the burning skeleton monster was something I was definitely thinking about.

I beat Hill to the door - not surprising when you consider how badly shot up she was. I listened for a second and didn't hear anything. Then I took a deep breath and made a diving roll into the room. That's something I really wouldn't recommend anyone else try, but it works for me. I'm lucky that way.

I ended up against a wall, crouched low and with my weapon pointed in front of me. Hill took a position at the doorway, using it for cover while aiming her gun into the room.

We weren't ready for what we saw.

The furniture had all been shoved to the sides of the room and the carpet had been torn up, revealing the wooden floor. Some sort of red symbol had been drawn on the floor. In the center of the symbol was little Steve Rogers, bound hand and foot. He was thrashing against the ropes, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

The guy I'd shot had collapsed half onto the symbol painted on the floor. I was pretty sure he was dead. His out-stretched arm was almost touching Steve.

An older man, wearing nothing but his pants, was standing near the back of the room, holding an ancient-looking, iron-bound, book open in his hands. Strange linear symbols were drawn all over his chest, arms, and face in what looked like black ink. His eyes were startlingly blue. They almost seemed to glow.

Looking more irritated than anything else, the old man said a word. And Maria Hill changed once again into a horror made of burning bones.

I put a shot into the old man, hoping that would break the... well... 'spell' or whatever it was that he'd done to Hill. I could have sworn that the bullet hit the old man in the chest, but he didn't react. And then I felt the kind of heat you get when someone opens a furnace door and Hill was on me.

Her first blow knocked the gun out of my hand and damn near broke my wrist. I screamed and tried to draw my backup weapon with my other hand, but by then the thing that used to be Maria Hill had me by the neck and arm. I locked eyes with her... it... and in them I could only see an eternity of flame.

Marie charged into the room, blazing away with her six-gun at the old man with the book. I think she was yelling my name. I tried to scream at Marie to run, this wasn't a thing we could fight, but the grip on my throat was too strong and it was getting worse. It was only a matter of a few seconds until my larynx collapsed.

Then Marie slapped Hill on the back of her flaming head. Through a gray haze as I teetered on the edge of conciousness, I could have sworn that I smelled burning flesh.

What happened next is difficult to describe.

Marie absorbs powers, but she absorbs the powers of folks like me and her and Kitty. The kind of people that some of the scientist types call 'mutants'. But whatever the hell Maria Hill had become, I was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with science. However, Marie's power did manage to do something.

Hill returned to normal - bullet wounds and all. Her grip relaxed and she collapsed against me. I grabbed her more by reflex than anything else. Meanwhile, Marie was surrounded by a reddish light and her eyes had become yellow slits. And she was screaming in sheer horror.

The old man in the back of the room cursed in German and gestured with his hands. Some unseen force slammed me, Marie, and Hill against the wall so hard that the plaster crunched and I could hear the studs in the wall crack. But the pressure didn't let up on us. It kept increasing and I realized that if it kept up we'd all be crushed like bugs.

Believe it or not, that's when Steve Rogers saved us.

He'd somehow worked his way loose from the ropes holding him. Then he reached over and grabbed one of those huge glass ashtrays. The kind you normally only see in bars. It was sitting on a low table that had been shoved, like the other furniture in the room, against the walls.

In one smooth motion, pivoting with the grace of a pro-baseball player, Steve pitched the ashtray like a discus. It slammed into the old man's temple. Whatever the old man had going for him that shrugged off gunfire didn't seem to work. His eyes lost their focus and he staggered backwards.

The pressure on us vanished and we collapsed to the floor.

Okay... no guns. With my uninjured hand, I pulled out the switchblade I'd taken earlier from Kitty. It flicked open as I scrambled painfully towards the old guy.

He was still dazed from Steve's contribution to the fight. I elbow-punched him in face and then kicked his legs out from under him. He tumbled to the floor and I landed on top of him.

He seemed shocked when three inches of steel suddenly appeared in his heart.

* * *

As we staggered to the car - I had Hill over my shoulder and Marie was leading Steve - I heard myself ask the kid, "Hey, how'd you get loose from those ropes?"

"Remember that guy who got shot and fell down right next to me?" Steve replied immediately. "I broke his wristwatch. Then I used the glass to cut my ropes."

Huh. Sharp kid.

"Who are you?" Steve asked us.

"A pair of hard-working and now badly beat-up private eyes," I answered tiredly. "We were hired to take care of you."

"Private eyes?" he said excitedly. "You mean, like in the movies? But that can't be right - you're girls!"

Still blinking back tears of pain from her burned hand, Marie smiled distractedly at Steve and ruffled his hair with her uninjured hand.

"Girls can do anything boys can do," I said stoically.

"Bet you can't pee standing up," Steve replied instantly.

Little wise-ass, I grumped to myself. But we had finally got to the car and I was too distracted to reply.

* * *

We barely got Hill to the hospital in time. Sometimes, I stay awake at night, stare at the ceiling and wonder if some higher - or lower - power intervened for Maria Hill. She really should have bled out and died before we got her to the hospital.

I had a badly sprained wrist, some cracked ribs, and a lot of miscellaneous bruises, cuts, and scrapes. Marie had a burned hand, but thankfully it wasn't too severe. She also had a list of minor injuries that more-or-less matched mine. Steve had a black eye and few bruises, but otherwise he'd managed to get through his ordeal pretty much intact.

Somehow or other, the hospital didn't get around to calling the cops - which would have meant a lot of awkward questions and would certainly have resulted in Steve being taken away from us.

"Did you call Logan?" I asked Marie as we painfully left the hospital with Steve in tow. Hill was staying, of course.

She smiled awkwardly at me, "Damn right."

"I don't like getting him involved in our cases," I growled.

"He's useful, Dom." Something about the way Marie was talking bothered me. It was like she was responding distantly and automatically, without precisely thinking about what she was saying.

"I don't want to owe him favors."

Marie smiled momentarily in a way that was oddly halfway between impish and subdued. It moved the bruises on her face around in interesting ways. "So we'll pay him back with a threesome. Problem solved."

"What's a threesome?" Steve asked innocently.

Oops. We'd forgotten the old saying about little pitchers and big ears.

"Forget I said that," Marie told Steve firmly - seeming to come back to herself for just a moment.

Everything Marie was saying and doing seemed forced. Something was bothering her, and it wasn't hard to figure out what it was. When she tried to absorb the powers of the transformed Maria Hill, she'd gotten a good look inside the mind of the creature that Maria had become. That had been bad, but she was trying to pretend that everything was okay. I was getting worried.

* * *

The Tinman and Mrs. Rogers showed up at our office almost simultaneously.

Mrs. Rogers was almost hysterical. As soon as she saw Steve, she grabbed him and squeezed so hard that I thought we might have to rescue him again. Once she was done with Steve, Mrs. Rogers hugged me... carefully, thank goodness. And then Marie. And then Sooraya. The Tinman seemed amused at our flustered reactions to her gratitude. We weren't used to gratitude. Most of our customers paid sullenly and then stalked out the door.

I told the Tinman our story. Maybe I expected him to tell us we were crazy, but instead he just listened to what I had to say with a mildly interested expression on what was left of his face. Mrs. Rogers' eyes got wider and wider as I worked my way through our tale.

Then, like a sorcerer out of some fairy tale, the Tinman handed Mrs. Rogers a bag of gold. It was filled with more double eagles. I was thinking that they might have to start calling him the Goldman.

"Hide. There may be more men who want to hurt Steven," he told Mrs. Rogers. His voice was dead serious.

Mrs. Rogers gave me an uncertain look. "Do as he says," I urged. "Get out of town right now - don't bother stopping for your stuff. Change your name. Settle down somewhere quiet and out of the way. Wait for the storm to pass."

She nodded hesitantly and thanked us again. Then Mrs. Rogers grabbed Steve and left.

I haven't seen her since. I hope she and Steve are okay.

The Tinman looked at me and said, "The storm hasn't begun."

It took me a second to realize he was talking about the last thing I'd said to Mrs. Rogers.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked, trying to keep the worst of the exasperation I was feeling out of my voice. "Who were the guys who kidnapped Steve? Why did they kidnap Steve? What happened to Maria Hill? And just what kind of storm are you talking about?"

Sooraya handed the Tinman a cup of tea and then pushed a chair next to him. She was being very deferrential to him. He accepted both with thanks and sat down.

"The man who had Steven kidnapped was a sorcerer," he said conversationally. "He was a member of a German mystical order that has dangerously extreme political leanings. As I understand it, he used divination magics to catch a glimpse of the future and learned that fate has great things in store for Steven Rogers - things that might frustrate the plans of men like him. He was attempting to alter fate by using Steven's life as a source of power. Suffice to say that it is a good thing you stopped him."

I nodded warily.

"Miss Hill is a victim," the Tinman continued. "She was temporarily possessed by a demon of vengeance that the sorcerer was using for his own purposes. That was a powerful and dangerous summoning - most unwise, actually. Zarathos is not an entity that can be safely toyed with."

Then, as calmly as if we were discussing the latest baseball box-scores, the Tinman put his straw into his teacup and took a sip. Marie and I exchanged a long look. Sooraya, acting as if the Tinman had said nothing particularly unusual, calmly inserted some paper into her typewriter and began tapping on the keys. Things are different where she comes from.

"There's a war coming," Marie said suddenly. "That's the storm you're talking about, isn't it?"

A worn expression appeared on what was left of the Tinman's face. "Yes," he said. "A terrible war. Worse than the last one, I fear."

I think my stomach turned over. Worse than the Great War? Dear, God...

Balancing his teacup on his knee, the Tinman put four more double eagles on my desk. "The remainder of your fee," he said.

I chuckled painfully, "I hope it covers our medical bills."

He shrugged, "I think you will be feeling much better tomorrow."

I managed not to laugh.

"That symbol that was painted on the floor of the hotel room," he said. "What did it look like?"

I shook my head, "Not a swastika, if that's what you're thinking."

"It looked like a snake with a lot of heads," said Marie.

Really? I hadn't got a good look at the symbol. All I saw were a bunch of wavy lines...

The Tinman nodded. And there was something in the way he did that that seemed to suggest that the Marie had given him an answer he expected.

"What's your name?" I asked, refusing to let the conversation end. I'm a PI. Curiousity is our curse.

He smiled. Sort of. Whatever was underneath his mask twisted his lower face strangely.

"I understand that people call me the Tinman."

"I mean your real name."

"You wouldn't know it."

"Try me."

"Please," Marie added gently.

The Tinman put his half-finished cup of tea on my desk, right next to the short stack of gold coins. He carefully tapped his wooden straw against the rim of the cup to clear it of fluid and then pocketed it. Then he stood up and limped to the office door. Sooraya stood up and opened the door for him.

Just before he left, he paused, looked back at us, and said, "I am Dr. Stephen Strange. Captain, U. S. Army Medical Corps. However, I am no longer on active duty."

He was right. The name meant nothing to me.

"Have a good day, Doctor Strange," Sooraya said politely as she held the door for him.

* * *

That night, just before we went to bed, I hesitantly asked Marie what she saw when she touched the demon.

"Loneliness," Marie said as she checked the bandages on her hand. That made her wince.

I frowned in surprise. "That was all?"

She looked at me. "Oh, there were other things. Things like hate, obsession, callousness, and anger. Lots of anger. But the only thing that really mattered was the loneliness."

Marie's eyes were haggard and frightened. I was pretty sure she wasn't telling me everything. But I decided not to push.

* * *

Despite bone-deep weariness, it took a long time for us to fall asleep. We lay together in bed until early in the morning, holding one another and not saying anything. Sometimes, Marie trembled and cried softly. When we finally did drift off, it should have been a terrible and restless sleep, filled with pain and nightmares.

Sunrise woke me. I felt rested and fine.

Wait a minute...

I lifted up my right hand and flexed it. It was okay - not even a bruise. In fact, there wasn't a scratch on me. And Marie, lying next to me, still asleep and breathing softly, also looked okay.

Trying not to wake Marie, I pulled down the covers and carefully unwrapped the bandages to examine her burned hand. It was fine.

I kissed Marie on the forehead. She opened her eyes and smiled at me. Then a surprised expression appeared on her face.

"We apparently have a pretty good doctor." I said.

"Looks like. Do you suppose Hill is better?"

"I'd say that's a good bet," I said as I examined Marie's face. Her eyes were clear and I didn't see any fear in them. She seemed to be back to normal.

A thought occurred to me.

"What do you remember about what you saw in that demon's head?" I asked carefully.

She considered that for a moment, then frowned. "Huh. Actually, I don't remember much about it at all. It all seems... hazy."

Yeah, we had a pretty good doctor, all right.

All Marie was wearing was some pajama tops. I was wearing the bottoms. She says that whenever we're in bed together, she likes to be able to touch and kiss my boobs whenever the urge strikes her. I try to accomodate.

As I pulled off her pajama top, I said, "Let's not get out of bed today."

"Sounds good," she said. Then she kissed me.


End file.
